WBKm 





The Year of Grac 

TRINITY TO ADVENT 



BY 

GEORGE HODGES 

Dean of the Episcopal Theological School 
Cambridge, Mass. 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER, INC. 
2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 



Copyright, 1910, 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER, Xnc, 



©CLA265128 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Coukage op the Commonplace, Trinity i 1 

The Meekness of Moses, Trinity ii 15 

The Efficient Bible, Trinity Hi t 28 

The Work of the Ministry, Trinity iv 39 

The Old Hundredth, Trinity v 55 

Why the World is no Better, Irinity vi 66 

The Peace op Nations, Trinity mi 78 

The Figures of the True, Trinity viii 90 

A Thousand Devils, Trinity ix 101 

Faith and Attainment, Trinity x t 114 

The Nearer Side, Trinity xi 125 

God is Not a Man, Trinity xii. 139 

Christian Decision, Trinity xiii. . . 151 

The Magnificat, Trinity xiv 161 

The Nunc Dimittis, Trinity xv = 172 

The Lord's Prayer: the Beginning, Trinity xvi 183 

The Lord's Prayer : for God's Glory, Trinity xvii 194 

The Lord's Prayer : for Our Needs, Trinity xviii 206 

At the Church Door, Trinity xix 219 

In the Time of Trouble, Trinity xx , 236 

Foot Soldiers in the Army op Martyrs, Trinity xxi 246 

Seven Times Seven, Trinity xxii 257 

Our Loving God, Trinity xxiii 267 

But a New Creature, Trinity xxiv 278 

The Twelve and the Five Thousand. Next before 
Advent , 389 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 



Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou inayest 
observe to do according to all the law. Jos. 1 : 7. 

The man who heard these words of God in his 
soul stood at the beginning of a new chapter of the 
book of life. He was not a young man, but he was 
at the threshold of his career. He was about to begin 
a work of great importance, and he was to begin it 
under conditions of unusual difficulty. He was to 
take the place of a man greater than himself; and, 
taking his place, he was to lead an untried army to 
attack a strong nation. 

Joshua was a great man, one of the decisive men of 
history. But he belongs to what we may call the 
middle class of greatness. Moses, whom he was to 
follow, was one of the greatest of men. We live to- 
day according to the laws which Moses, in the name 
of God, set forth. In the last book of the Bible, the 
prophet hears the redeemed in Paradise singing the 
song of Moses. This great man Joshua was to follow. 
And taking his great place, he was to lead an army 
unexercised in war to the conquest of a strong and 
brave people, whose cities were walled to the skies. 

Under these circumstances, Joshua hears in his 
soul just the voice we would expect him to hear: Be 
thou strong and very courageous. But the words 

1 



2 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



which follow are very surprising. It is not, as we 
would expect, Be thou strong and courageous that 
thou mayest plan a w r ise campaign, and lead the army 
into the field of victorious encounter, and face death 
in battle. No ; it is, Be thou strong and very coura- 
geous that thou mayest observe to do according to 
all the law: that thou mayest be a righteous man, 
ruling a righteous people, keeping the ten command- 
ments. This, I say, is a surprising context. It is a 
swift descent from the high hilltops of romance and 
poetry to the dusty roads and plain prose of common 
life. 

It is like the interview between the Lord and the 
rich young ruler. The young man comes to the Mas- 
ter, running, with hands outstretched. He falls 
upon his knees before Him, crying, " What good 
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? " And 
the Lord, looking upon him loves him, as He loves 
all such young, aspiring, enthusiastic persons. The 
Lord looks upon him as He looks to-day upon all 
young men, who are facing the future with such 
eagerness and confidence. But what does He say? 
" If thou wilt enter into life, keep the command- 
ments." The young man looks up astonished and 
disappointed. He had expected some dramatic as- 
signment of romantic duty. " Which ? " he asks, 
" Which commandments do you mean ? " still hoping 
that the Lord had some new adventure, some knightly 
quest, to set before him. " Which ? " And when 
Christ answered, " Just the plain old ten. Be honest, 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 



3 



be clean, be considerate, be helpful, love God and 
your neighbor. This do and thou shalt enter into 
life/' the youth was grieved. " I have done these 
things/' he said, " since I was a child." You see 
how like this is to the word of God to Joshua : " Be 
strong and very courageous, that thou mayest ob- 
serve to do according to all the law." The field of 
courage, the attainment of aspiration, is the daily 
obedience of the moral law. 

I have a friend who has in his possession a Victoria 
Cross. Everybody knows that the Victoria Cross is 
the supreme reward which England gives for distin- 
guished valor on the field of battle. But this reward 
is not given to the man who simply does his duty, 
even in the face of death. Every man is expected to 
do his duty. When a man goes out of his way to do a 
splendid thing which he did not need to do, and does 
it splendidly, he wins the Victoria Cross. This man's 
father won the cross in the Sepoy Rebellion at the 
siege of Chunderi. Chunderi was a stout and moated 
fortress. The stones of its walls were twelve feet 
thick, and the water of its moat was twelve feet deep. 
And in this fortress, when the Indian Mutiny began, 
were English women and children. And they had 
to be got out. Now, this man's father had gone fish- 
ing in the moat of Chunderi and had found a place 
where the moat was partly filled with rubbish, so 
that in that place the water was only two feet deep 
instead of twelve. And he volunteered to lead a com- 
pany of soldiers over the moat against the walls. 



4 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



And this he did successfully. Over they went, in the 
face of the guns of the garrison, and scaled the walls 
and took the fort. And he was given the Victoria 
Cross. But that which especially interested me was 
this: The hero wrote a book for the reading of his 
grandchildren, containing the story of his life. And 
in this book of eighty printed pages he gave to the 
adventure of the Victoria Cross just two lines, about 
twenty words, the length of two frugal telegrams; 
while he gave some twenty pages to the record of his 
administrative work as governor of one of the central 
provinces of India. There, you see, is the same thing 
over again. The emphasis is put, as in the word of 
God to the captain of the host of Israel, and as in 
the answer of the Lord to the question of the rich 
young ruler, upon the common life. The contrast is 
between two kinds of courage: the courage of the 
crisis and the courage of the commonplace. The 
hero gives twenty words to the courage of the crisis, 
and twenty pages to the courage of the commonplace. 

For the courage of the commonplace is more diffi- 
cult than the courage of the crisis. 

It is more difficult because it is not attended by 
the rewards of appreciation and applause. The 
courage of the crisis is called for by dramatic con- 
ditions. It belongs to the field of battle, where it 
is assisted by the sound of martial music, by the 
beat of drums, by the sight of uniforms, by the 
presence of great companies of men. It is a public 
virtue which cannot be hid. The man who meets 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 5 

the crisis knows that if he fails he will be everlast- 
ingly ashamed of himself; while, if he succeeds, he 
will have the applause of his admiring neighbors. 
And that consideration helps him mightily. But the 
commonplace does not attract attention, gets no men- 
tion in the newspapers or in the histories, and does 
not lie along the way to glory. It is not assisted by 
popular expectation or appreciation. It does not ap- 
peal to the imagination or summon the will, like the 
crisis. Thus Koger Williams said that there were 
Indians in Rhode Island who would stand to be 
burned at the stake without a groan, but when they 
had the toothache, they cried. There were no ad- 
miring crowds to watch the fortitude with which 
they bore that homely pain. 

Also, the courage of the commonplace is more 
difficult than the courage of the crisis because it has 
no clear limitation in time. The commonplace goes 
on and on. I talked with a drill-master in a military 
school who had played a bugle in the charge at Bala- 
klava. He had been one of those six hundred who in 
unquestioning obedience to orders attacked the whole 
Russian army drawn up in position; he had been 
one of the two hundred who came back alive. I 
said, " How long did it take ? " And he said, 
" Twenty minutes ! " Twenty minutes into the val- 
ley of death and out again, with cannon to the right 
of them and cannon to the left of them, volleying and 
thundering, — only twenty minutes ! Many a man is 
able to be a hero for twenty minutes, while all the 



6 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



world wonders ; but it is likely that some of the Light 
Brigade were anything but heroes afterwards, in the 
slow weeks of commonplace convalescence in the mili- 
tary hospital. 

The commonplace goes on and on. Sometimes it 
is in the form of pain, which comes and stays and 
nobody knows when it will end. Sometimes it is in 
the form of grief, of disappointment, of bereavement ; 
the thing has happened, and there is no way to change 
it; suddenly, in a moment, we are thrust out of 
heaven into hell, and there we are, there day by day 
we are to live without hope of release. Sometimes 
the commonplace is in the form of drudgery and is 
made up of the common tasks of the monotonous day, 
beginning every morning and never ending, uninter- 
esting, done only for the sake of keeping alive, till 
men question whether keeping alive is worth the cost. 
Then to be a hero, under such conditions to play the 
game, under such conditions to live the life with a 
smiling face, an undaunted will, and a serene heart, 
to be the master of our fate, to be the captain of our 
soul, this is to play the hardest and the noblest and 
the bravest part. 

The courage of the commonplace is not only more 
difficult but more important than the courage of the 
crisis. It is more important because it takes in a 
larger part of life. The crisis enters rarely, some- 
times never, into normal experience. One may live 
one's sheltered days from birth to death, with no de- 
mand for the exercise of that kind of courage. But 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 7 

the commonplace is so named because it is the common 
ground and substance of our life. It is the condi- 
tion under which we do our work. If we are to 
be saints and heroes anywhere, it is of supreme im- 
portance that we be saints and heroes here. 

Anatole Trance has an amusing passage in his 
autobiography in which he says that when he was a 
little boy, and was casting about in the manner of 
youth for a profession, he made up his mind that 
he would become a famous saint. So he looked up 
and down the calendar, seeking a good example for 
his emulation, and at last chose old Simeon Stylites, 
who, you remember, attained a high reputation for 
sanctity by living for several years on top of a high 
pillar, clad in a hair shirt, saying his prayers. The 
small boy took a kitchen table for his pillar, and im- 
provised a hair shirt, and entered upon a protracted 
course of fasting. But his father and mother, and 
his older brothers and sisters and the cook made life 
very unpleasant for him. " Then," he says, " I per- 
ceived that it is very difficult to be a saint while 
living with one's family. I understood why St. 
Anthony and St. Jerome went into the desert." 

Yes, it is very difficult, and also highly important, 
to be a saint while living with one's family. One of 
the heaviest burdens which the Lord put on any man's 
shoulders in the story of the gospel was that which 
He laid on him who had come out of a great deliver- 
ance, and who desired to stay with Christ who had de- 
livered him, but to whom Christ said, " Go home to 



8 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



your own house, and show your family and your 
neighbors what the Lord hath done for your soul." 
In the early days of persecution there were many peo- 
ple who earnestly desired to be burned at the stake or 
eaten alive by lions, and who were held back from 
those adventures only by main force. But when it 
came to holiness and heroism of life ; when it was a 
matter of mere patience, or consideration, or honesty, 
or truthfulness; when they were summoned to the 
courage of the commonplace, they failed. They had 
the courage of the crisis, to meet the dramatic emer- 
gency, to face death, but they could not endure the 
sober and searching admonition, " Only be thou 
strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe 
to do according to all the law." And therein they 
missed the largest opportunities of heroic service. 

For the courage of the citizen is more important 
than the courage of the soldier. All honor to the 
brave men who in the time of national need, and for 
the furtherance of righteous causes, have come for- 
ward with stout hearts, offering their lives for the 
general good. Theirs was the courage of the crisis. 
We look now for the high and constant courage of 
the commonplace. We are in need of men who are 
brave enough to face the unromantic duties, and who 
have the endurance which shall keep them faithful 
without faltering in the face of failure. 

This nation to-day is in a state of civil war. In 
many a city the town hall is garrisoned by rebels who 
from the shelter of that fortress are terrorizing and 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 9 



plundering the people. These mercenary politicians 
are as hostile to the public good as any men who ever 
marched in the uniform of an army across a field of 
battle. By diverting the taxes of the people from 
civic maintenance and improvement to their own 
gain, they are actually killing as many people in the 
course of a single year of their maladministration 
as are killed in the progress of a considerable war. 
They are poisoning women and children in the foul 
streets and foul tenements for which they are re- 
sponsible. They are corrupting the souls of the 
youth by the vices which they support and encourage 
for their own profit. We look for reinforcements 
against this common foe, against this subtle and au- 
dacious enemy whose leaders are disguised as gentle- 
men and Christians. It seems plain enough, and 
simple and easy; but you will not find it so. It 
seems impossible that you, with your clear sight, 
with your informed mind, with your understanding 
heart, with your good will, shall ever stand aside as 
cowards and let the politicians plunder the poor. But 
the situation calls for hard, homely and unapplauded 
heroism. It demands the courage of the common- 
place. And you will find cowardice where you least 
expect it, — among business men who are afraid that 
the politicians will injure their business, among phi- 
lanthropists and educators who are afraid that the 
politicians will cut down their appropriations. You 
will find men more ready to risk their lives than 
their property for the common good. 



10 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



These temptations will assail you in your turn. 
They will put your high ideals, your noble purposes, 
your sturdy resolutions to the test. Every commu- 
nity is in need of the service of educated men. The 
community is the Promised Land; it is to be con- 
quered and possessed. The nation is to be made the 
kingdom of heaven ; the city is to be made the city of 
God. You stand to-day looking in that direction, 
marching that way, like an army with banners. If 
there were real banners flying and bugles blowing, if 
you were keeping step in the swinging pace of a regi- 
ment, you would be brave enough. There is no 
doubt of that. You would go straight into the face 
of death: not a man of you would falter. But the 
war in which we would enlist you this day is a more 
serious matter than that, and calls for rarer courage. 
It calls for the courage of continual self-sacrifice, for 
the courage which undertakes a daily duty as if it 
were a splendid adventure, for the courage which 
cares only for the great cause and is not dependent on 
the wages of appreciation. It demands the courage 
of the commonplace. 

I have indicated some of the elements of difficulty 
and some of the points of importance in this kind of 
courage. Let me make it plain in detail. 

Here is a young man entering to-day with eagerness 
and confidence upon the life for which he has been 
trained in the college. He passes the mystical divid- 
ing line which parts the student from the citizen. 
On he goes with the best intentions, with large plans 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE H 

and high ideals, hoping to justify the hopes of his 
home and of his friends. And straightway he meets 
the monotony and dull routine of life ; he encounters 
the plain tasks and is called upon to perform the ordi- 
nary duties. There is no sound of fifes, nor applause 
of expectant observers ; there are no adventures. No- 
body pays any particular deference, or even attention, 
to him. The world does not seem to have been wait- 
ing for him. He joins the crowd, keeps step with 
his neighbors, and obeys orders. 

If he is of a rather low order of intelligence or of 
ambition, he accepts this situation, adjusts himself 
to it as comfortably as he can, submerges himself in 
it, and is heard of no more. That is the end of him. 
But if he is of a different disposition, if he is con- 
scious of large powers for which he seems to have no 
room or opportunity, if the office feels like a cage, 
then the man is tempted to depression. What he 
needs, when this temptation assails him, is to consider 
the commonplace as the proper field for the exercise of 
knights and heroes. He is to remember that the very 
fact that life is dull and difficult makes the conquest 
of the situation splendid. Here he is to find exercise 
for patience, for humility, for endurance, for all the 
substantial virtues. And as he proceeds, setting his 
will to it, pushing ahead as a man pushes against a 
storm of wind and rain, he will find that the common- 
place is filled with its own interest and value. The 
common life is unimaginably rich with opportunity, 
even as the common ground when it is attentively 



12 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



examined is found to be planted with innumerable 
seeds. The country town, the remote parish, the 
mill, the street, the office, the daily task, are large 
enough, and difficult enough, and important enough 
for the energies of the best man in any college class. 
The life of the whole world was changed by a man, 
who perceived with attention and imagination the 
force of the commonplace steam which came out of 
a commonplace kettle. It is a symbol of the signifi- 
cance of the commonplace. 

Every man must face not only the daily task but 
the daily temptation. His initial business is to be a 
good man, a clean, upright, honest, faithful, con- 
siderate Christian man. A man does not need to 
graduate from college and get out into the noise of 
the world to learn that this is a matter of great diffi- 
culty. He has found that out already, by the tuition 
of experience. He knows at the same time that to do 
this hard thing is of the utmost importance, because 
thereby he shapes his character, he determines his 
spirit, he sets the standard of his life. He does not 
need the admonition of the preacher to tell him that 
he may make his fortune, and exalt his name, and 
gain the whole world, and at the same time lose his 
soul. He knows that. He observes among the men 
about him some who have made that tragic bargain. 
He has no desire to be of their company. But he 
finds that plain goodness and the resistance of small, 
daily temptations demand a heroism compared with 
which the facing of guns is easy. It is a heroism 



THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE 13 

which is made difficult by the fact that it is not pop- 
ularly recognized as heroic. It is even associated in 
some minds with weakness and timidity. 

You know what I mean. Let a young man say to 
himself, as he makes his plans of life, " By the grace 
of God, I will be scrupulously honest, I will speak 
the truth, I will neither bet nor gamble, I will keep 
myself clean from the sins of drunkenness and of sen- 
suality. And all this I will do in word and in 
thought as well as in deed." Such resolutions as 
these are a declaration of war. They mean daily 
difficulty. They are concerned with commonplace 
temptations, and the conquest of them all will not 
make a man a hero, in the esteem of general society. 
But that means that they are just so much the more 
heroic. For heroism is not a matter of applause. It 
is not an affair which needs for its performance the ex- 
pectation of a multitude. It is is not necessarily dra- 
matic. The hero is the man who does the right thing 
when it is terribly hard to do it, and when other 
people are afraid. There are young men of high 
spirits, ready for adventures, who are sincerely de- 
sirous to be good men. They have no instinctive lik- 
ing for the unclean. But they go the way of the crowd 
because they are afraid to do anything else. They do 
not dare stand alone, saying, " Friends, this is a 
thing which I hate. I will have no part in it." 

We need men of moral nerve, heroes who can be 
heroic out of uniform, without the stimulus of music, 
in the stress of a moral situation, when heroism is 



14 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



desperately hard, and there are no shining rewards. 
We want men to feel as they go out of the discipline 
and competition of the college into the large and free 
work of life, that the field of common temptation is 
wide enough for all their powers, and summons them 
to the daily practice of the most heroic virtues. 

The gospels are filled with the glorification of the 
commonplace. 'Not only does the Lord set about the 
conquest of the world in ways which seem at first 
amazingly quiet and ineffective, making friends with 
fishermen and preaching his great sermons to small 
congregations, but He chooses for His assistants and 
successors twelve men among whom not one is rich, 
not one is influential, not one is possessed of admin- 
istrative ability, and only one or two rise at all above 
the common level. They are commonplace men. 
And when we read about them in the Gospels and in 
the Acts we find them doing commonplace things. 
But they transformed the world. The Lord selected 
twelve plain citizens, twelve men out of the king's 
highway, most of whom could be duplicated in the 
last third of any college class, and they transformed 
the world. Of course they did. They appealed to 
the common man; they showed him how to under- 
stand and accomplish and glorify the common task; 
they had the courage of the commonplace. 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which 
were upon the face of the earth. Num. 12 : 3. 

The statement of the New England Primer that 
the meekest man was Moses is derived from this text. 
But almost everything which Moses did seems to 
contradict it. For to be meek, as we commonly un- 
derstand the word, is to be mild and gentle and 
pliant and submissive. Nobody, I think, would select 
just those adjectives to describe the character of 
Moses. 

The first act of Moses on arriving at the age of 
manhood was his adventure with the Egyptian over- 
seer. He went out into the field where his Hebrew 
countrymen were serving bitterly as slaves. They 
were pathetically submissive, after the manner of 
slaves. They toiled hard for the benefit of their mas- 
ters, and allowed themselves to be beaten. They were 
all meek, but Moses. When he saw an Egyptian 
strike a Hebrew he struck the Egyptian, and so 
straight was the blow that the overseer fell dead 
where he stood. 

The next account of Moses finds him in the land 
of Midian. There is a well in a field, and flocks 
of sheep are lying around it, and, as Moses draws 
near, seven young women, the daughters of the parish 

15 



16 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



priest, are trying to draw water for their sheep ; but 
the shepherds prevent them. The minister's daughters 
are very meek. They have to be, because the shep- 
herds are stronger than they. But Moses is not 
meek for a moment. Instead of standing by, mild 
and submissive, pained that there should be such 
bad men in the world, he gets a club and attacks the 
whole gang of shepherds with such energy that they 
run away. 

This, you perceive, is quite different from the 
meekness which is set forth in Browning's verse: 

" He feels he has a fist, then folds his arms 
Crosswise, and makes his mind up to be meek." 

Presently Moses stands before Pharaoh. " Pha- 
raoh," he says, " you must issue a proclamation of 
emancipation. You must free your slaves. You 
must let Israel go." " But I won't," says Pharaoh, 
" instead of setting them free, I will make them 
work more painfully than ever: they shall make 
bricks without straw." " Then," says Moses, " the 
river shall be turned into blood, the country shall be 
beset with plagues and vermin, the sun shall be turned 
into darkness, and all the firstborn of the land shall 
die." And so it was, day after day, till Pharaoh in 
desperation let the people go. Do you suppose that 
if Pharaoh had been catechized according to the 
New England Primer, and somebody had said, " Pha- 
raoh, who is the meekest man in your dominions ? " — 
do you suppose that he would have answered, Moses ? 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



17 



He would have replied, " I don't know who is the 
meekest man. But I will tell you who is the most 
imprudent man, I will tell you who is the most mis- 
chievous man, I will tell you who is the only man 
of whom I am afraid — his name is Moses." 

I will take one other illustrative page from the 
life of Moses. He is on Mt. Sinai, coming down from 
his interview with God; Joshua is with him. And 
in the stillness of the mountain solitude, suddenly 
there is a sound, coming from the valley. And Moses 
stops and says, " What is that noise ? " and Joshua 
answers, " It sounds to me like shouting : there must 
be a battle raging down below." But Moses says, " It 
sounds to me like singing. There is something going 
on down there which is worse than a battle." And 
then they come in sight of the camp, and there is the 
Golden Calf, and all the people praying and dancing. 
And Moses takes the two tables of stone, and flings 
them over the side of the cliff. Down he comes to 
the amazement and terror of the people. Thunder 
and lightning are not to be compared with the aw- 
fulness of his appearance. He breaks the Golden 
Calf into a thousand pieces ; he grinds the pieces into 
powder; he scatters the powder over the surface of 
the river and makes the people get down on their 
hands and knees and drink it. The one man, alone 
and unarmed save by the might and majesty of his 
own righteous will, compels the obedience of the 
multitude. 

If to be meek is defined as to be mild and gentle, 



18 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



and pliant and submissive, then we must either deny 
the meekness of Moses or we must find a more ade- 
quate definition. 

There is a more adequate definition in the inci- 
dent from which the text is taken. Moses has just 
been getting married, and his brother Aaron and his 
sister Miriam object, and there is a domestic dis- 
agreement, and the grievance enlarges itself into a 
wide and general complaint. The brother and sister 
say, " Moses, we are as good as you. Has not the 
Lord spoken by us as well as by you? How is it, 
then, that you take so much upon you and make 
yourself a lord over us ? We are older than you " — 
and that was true — " and we are as good as you 
are." It is just here that the historian introduces 
in parenthesis the words of the text, " Now the man 
Moses was very meek, above all the men which were 
upon the face of the earth." As if he would say, 
" Moses was not at all an arrogant or forth-putting 
person, as Aaron and Miriam have implied. Great as 
he was, strong as he was, gifted as he was with 
the genius of leadership, he was at the same time a 
man of humble mind, careless of titles and secular 
distinctions and material rewards, not seeking his 
own glory; he was of all men the meekest; and the 
historian goes on to show that it was God, not Moses, 
who took up the quarrel and rebuked the discon- 
tented and ambitious critics. 

There are, accordingly, two kinds of meekness. 

There is a meekness which is defined in the die- 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



19 



tionary as synonymous with mildness and gentleness, 
with humility and submission. It is associated in 
the Bible with patience and long-suffering. It ap- 
pears in those who never complain, and never contra- 
dict. The pattern of it is the patient Griselda, as 
she is depicted in the Canterbury Tales, the wife who 
obeys a mean and selfish husband no matter what he 
tells her to do. One after another he commands her 
to give up her children in their smiling infancy, and 
she yields without a protest; by and by he tells her 
that he has found a better wife, and that she must 
not only resign her place but must adorn the house 
for the coming of her successor, and this too she does 
without a murmur. The meekest woman was Gri- 
selda. 

But there is another meekness which is defined in 
the example of Moses. It takes up into itself all the 
gentle qualities which are commonly associated with 
meekness. It is patient and long-suffering, and lowly 
and loving, as the Bible says. It is everlastingly 
submissive. But it has a perfectly clear understand- 
ing of the limits of submission. It does not submit 
to any public or social wrong which it can in any 
measure remedy. It does not sit down quietly and 
let the world go by, asking only to be let alone. 
Neither does it submit to any personal indignity 
which it is able to prevent. It is aware of its 
own rights and asserts them, for the good both of the 
individual and of the neighborhood. It is a virtue 
which is not consistent with indolence, or with cow- 



20 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



ardice, or with weakness. It is self-respecting, but it 
is not self-asserting. 

This is the essential characteristic of true meek- 
ness: it is not self-asserting. It is altogether op- 
posed to conceit, ambition, pride, arrogance, and 
to those qualities which enable a man to shove his 
neighbor this way and that, in order that he may 
get through the throng into the best place. The meek 
man on occasion may be as bold as a lion, he may 
behave himself like a lion — but never on his own ac- 
count. 

Moses showed this kind of meekness when the 
Lord proposed to disinherit his exasperating people, 
and destroy them with a pestilence, and make Moses 
the progenitor of a new and mightier nation. He 
refused the honor, and prayed that the people might 
be pardoned and preserved. 

Moses showed his meekness when some intrusive 
persons came and cried, " Moses, certain private men, 
without the least authority, are prophesying in the 
camp." He said, " Would God that all the Lord's 
people were prophets." He had in him no taint of 
that petty jealousy which is the opposite of meekness. 

But when Nadab and Abihu, when Korah, Dathan 
and Abiram, insulted him and invaded his preroga- 
tive, he withstood them mightily; he gave place to 
them, no, not for an hour ; for they assailed not him 
but the efficiency of government and the will of God. 

Of course, just here, a difficulty arises in the easy 
compromise in the minds of men between the self-as- 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



21 



sertion which means only selfishness and regard for 
our own pride, and the self-assertion which is neces- 
sary for the public welfare. We may confuse our 
own interests with the righteous cause, and feel that 
injury is done to the state, or to the church, or to 
the cause, or even to God himself, unless we are ac- 
corded proper honor. It is a subtle temptation, which 
we have got to meet as best we can. We have got to 
say to ourselves in the presence of wrong : If now I 
keep silent, it is because of meekness, or because of 
indolence or cowardice: am I meek or weak? And, 
if now I speak or act, is it from self-seeking, or do 
I honestly conduct myself with that robust meekness 
which sinks all thought of self in the advance of the 
kingdom of the truth and of the right ? These are 
questions which we are left to answer for ourselves. 

Only let us clearly understand that meekness, 
while on the one hand it is inconsistent with self- 
assertion, on the other hand is perfectly consistent 
with all the heroic virtues. We are to endeavor to 
be meek not with the passivity of patient Griselda 
but with the vigorous activity of militant Moses. 
Thus, in the Morte Darthur, you remember how Sir 
Ector concludes his eulogy of Sir Launcelot : " Thou 
was the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in 
hall among ladies ; and thou were the sternest knight 
to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest." 

It is in this sense that we are to read the beat- 
itude ; " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth." The French in their New Testament, in 



22 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



which the " elect " are described as the " elite," trans- 
late " meek " by debonaire. Blessed are the polite, 
the people who have good manners and are pleasant 
to live with. This, I think, is better than the or- 
dinary definition, which would make the beatitude 
mean, " Blessed are the mild, blessed are the pliant, 
blessed are the submissive, blessed are they who have 
no will of their own." Surely, such as these shall 
never inherit the earth. But the true meaning im- 
plies something more than debonaire. Blessed are 
they who have the good manners the source of which 
is disregard of self and consideration for others. 

The meekness of the Sermon on the Mount is the 
combination of these two qualities. 

It is a disregard of self, such as is praised again 
in our Lord's words : " He that humbleth himself shall 
be exalted." The meek man humbles himself, and 
therefore God and his neighbor join to confer upon 
him the inheritance of the earth. His is that dis- 
position and character which gains the favor of both 
God and man. We perceive that he is not thinking 
of his own advantage, and we therefore take the re- 
sponsibility of his advantage upon us. We delight to 
honor him. 

But to this disregard of self must be added con- 
sideration for others. The meek man must be strong. 
He must be active. He must be interested in the 
world about him. He must have convictions and 
express them, and behave himself in accordance with 
them. It is this contrast between his disregard of 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



23 



himself and his efficient regard for us that compels 
us to give him our admiration and affection. 

It is in this sense that we are to understand our 
Lord's words : " I am meek and lowly in heart." 
This sentence has dominated Christian art in its por- 
trayal of Christ. The qualities which appear in His 
pictures are His gentleness, His serene mildness, His 
patience. The emphasis which is placed in art upon 
the sufferings of Jesus confirms this impression. He 
is a passive victim in the hands of sinful men. They 
vehemently accuse Him and revile Him, they mock 
Him and scourge Him, they crucify Him, and He 
opens not His mouth. 

Such, however, was not at all the impression which 
He made upon the people of His own time. You 
remember how He asked His disciples : " Whom do 
men say that I am ? " They said, " Most people say 
that you are Elijah, and all agree that you are one of 
the old prophets come to life again." But not a 
man of all the prophets suggests the virtue of meek- 
ness, in its ordinary meaning. They were the bold 
men who rose up in the midst of a pliant and sub- 
missive people and rebuked the priests and the 
princes. They defied authority. They were hated, 
they were exiled, they were stoned, they were sawn 
asunder, they were slain with the sword, and this they 
suffered because they were the spokesmen of protest 
and revolt. They had the meekness of Savonarola 
and of Luther. They had the meekness of Moses. 
And, of them all, Elijah was the most terrible, be- 



24 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



fore whom the king trembled. These were the men 
of whom the Scribes and Pharisees immediately 
thought when they looked for the likeness of Jesus in 
the experiences of the past — these strong, bold, active, 
militant men, of whom He was chief. 

The prophets were meek, like Moses, in that they 
sought not their own. They disregarded all the 
prizes and preferments of their time. Our Lord was 
meek and lowly in heart, in the same way. He con- 
sorted with simple people on terms of affection and 
brotherhood, chose His companions from the fishing 
fleet of the lake of Galilee, was voluntarily so poor 
for the sake of His cause that He had not where to 
lay His head, He took little children into His arms 
and blessed them, He was the friend of sinners. But 
He said : " Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites/' and the Pharisees and Sadducees put him 
to death because they were afraid of Him. They 
did not dare to let Him live. 

Here is a man in college, beset by the temptations 
which inevitably accompany college life. He is 
solicited to do the things which his companions do, 
against his conscience. He knows that these things 
are wrong. Sometimes in word, sometimes in deed, 
lie is moved to go with the crowd. If he is meek in 
the wrong sense, he goes. He is silent, when he knows 
that he ought to speak in protest; he listens, when 
he knows that he ought to obey the word of Him who 
said, " Take heed what ye hear." He goes where 
he ought not, and does what he ought not, often 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES 



25 



against his better will, because he dislikes to ap- 
pear singular. That is a mean, weak, cowardly and 
disgraceful meekness. These are they who shall 
never inherit the earth ; they shall inherit something 
different — and worse. 

The meek man in the best sense is he in whose 
vocabulary the words Truth and Righteousness are 
spelled in capitals. Self is spelled in small type. 
He is meek enough not to care what people may 
think about him. But for the good of his brother, 
for the cause of righteousness and truth, for the ad- 
vancement of the Kingdom of God, he is willing to 
face opposition and to endure hardship. 

Here is a woman in society, encountering the cur- 
rent social temptations. For her they may be no 
temptations. She may be no more attracted by them 
than Moses was attracted by the festivities of the 
Golden Calf. But along with them goes a subtle 
temptation which is mightily attractive, because to 
follow it is so easy, so pleasant, and so peaceful. 
She is tempted to be meek. It is, for example, a 
matter of gambling at a game of cards, or a matter 
of attendance at a play which appeals to the worse 
side of human nature, or a matter of quietly break- 
ing the old-fashioned standards of Christian behav- 
ior on the Lord's Day; and she doesn't like to in- 
terrupt the general consent. The thing is against her 
taste, even against her conscience, but she does it, 
smiling as she goes, hoping for the benediction of 
the meek. 



26 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



The truth is that the only action which will affect 
and eventually change society is the protesting dec- 
lination of people who are in the midst of social 
life. To say No then is to set forward the 
kingdom of heaven in the world. To say yes is to 
deny Christ before men. The situation calls for cour- 
age. It is to be met with the meekness of Moses. 

Here is a man in business, facing the current 
commercial temptations. If he is in a subordinate 
position, he is tempted into small dishonesties, such 
as grow and grow by imperceptible degrees into 
criminal offences. He is tempted to lie and steal. 
Not at first in such gross forms as make him blush to 
hear the Ten Commandments read in church, but in 
subtle, indirect and plausible ways, for every one of 
which he can find some justification and excuse. The 
meek man of the baser sort, yields. He says, " Why 
should I be different from my neighbors ? " 

If he is in a high position, he is tempted into that 
moral debasement which is called the loss of the fidu- 
ciary principle. That is, if he yields, he uses his 
great opportunities for his own good, not for the 
benefit of those who have trusted him, nor for the 
welfare of the community. He is the lawyer who 
for the interest of a corporation, confuses the dis- 
tinction between right and wrong ; he is the politician 
who is in office for what he can get out of it: he is 
the physician, who plays with vice; he is the di- 
rector who increases his own income in disregard or 
defiance of the welfare of the community. 



THE MEEKNESS OF MOSES. 



27 



There is a statue in a public park in Richmond 
erected to the memory of the president of a railroad. 
It commemorates a man who directed the business of 
a great railroad with such fairness and generosity 
and consideration for his employees, his stockholders 
and his customers that when he died " they gave him 
the burial of a king." He was a meek man — a gentle, 
quiet, unassuming man, disregardful of himself. 
But he was neither mild, nor pliant, nor submissive. 
He had the meekness of Moses. 

God give us, whatever our place and station in 
life, the meekness of Moses — to disregard ourselves, 
to consider our neighbors ; when it is necessary, to re- 
buke evil boldly; to follow in the steps of Him who 
said, " Blessed are the meek." Then shall we indeed 
inherit the earth ; and heaven also. 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE. 



The holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation. II. Tim. 3: 15. 

It is a description of the Bible in terms of efficiency. 
This is what the Bible will do, unless we prevent it : 
it will make ns wise unto salvation. There is, indeed, 
an academic wisdom, which has to do with truth for 
its own sake. The study of language, of science, of 
history, may result in the attainment of this scholarly 
wisdom. And to these and other departments of 
study the Bible is related. It was originally written 
in Hebrew, in Aramaic and in Greek, and is trans- 
lated by the Bible Societies into all the tongues of 
the race, and thus comes within the province of the 
student of language. Here and there it touches the 
domain of astronomy and of geology, and thus be- 
comes of interest to the physicist. A great part of 
the Bible is occupied with history, and thus pro- 
vides material for the use of historians. These mat- 
ters, however, are all of them incidental and subor- 
dinate. They are akin to the interest which attaches 
to the Bible as a bound and printed book. Once it 
was written on rolls of papyrus and of parchment; 
then came paper and type. The printer may write an 
interesting commentary upon the Bible, with chapters 
on manuscripts and versions and editions, Not one 

88 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE 



29 



of these students is dealing with the real Bible any 
more than the shoemaker, the tailor, the dentist or 
the barber is dealing with the real man. The Bible is 
a book of efficient truth. It is a setting forth of great, 
living and determining ideas. It is a record of a pro- 
gressive revelation of God. The heart of it is the 
revelation. The lower critic, with his comparisons 
of texts and his examination of syllables, and the 
higher critic with his investigations of authorship and 
date, are in their particular provinces related to the 
real Bible as the botanist and the forester are related 
to the real mountain. The true description of the 
Bible is in terms of efficiency. The essential pur- 
pose of the holy Scriptures is to make men wise unto 
salvation. 

The Bible is efficient because it is a revelation of 
man. 

One of the characteristics of this book, whereby 
it is differentiated from all the other Bibles of the 
race, is its concrete human interest. It is concerned 
not only with man but with men. Its pages bring 
before us a long procession of people. Its precepts 
are embodied in persons. It is akin not to the dia- 
logues of Plato but to the plays of Shakespeare; 
that is, truth is not reasoned out, but acted out. 
Truth is presented to us in the universal language of 
human life. Thus, for example, the problem of evil, 
the evident difficulty which inheres in the fact 
of the affliction of the good, is considered in the 
Bible not by a group of philosophers sitting on a 



30 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



porch or walking up and down beneath the trees, 
but by a good man who is in the actual pain of afflic- 
tion, and by his friends who come to comfort or to 
console him. The question is brought down out of 
the abstract clouds and is embodied in Job's patient 
person. The centre of interest is not a proposition, 
but a man. The perplexity is not cleared away, even 
by the divine conclusion of the debate. The mystery 
remains. But the thing accomplished is the presen- 
tation of the example of a good man suffering for no 
sin of his, face to face as it seems, with the injustice 
of God, and yet saying, " Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust in Him. " It is a revelation of man. It 
shows what a man did, and therefore what men may 
do, under the bitter stress of adverse circumstances. 
And it has had its effect, again and again, in the 
serenity of saints and in the constancy of martyrs. 

So it is with a hundred other Bible persons, saints 
and sinners, who move and speak in this book, for 
our good. The conventionality with which the 
book is commonly printed hides from many readers 
the amazing unconventionality of the narrative. The 
man who is writing history to-day is the faithful 
servant of the facts. He will set down nothing ex- 
cept that for which his documents give him a clear 
warrant. Whatever in the utterance of his hero got 
definitely into the memory of reliable persons, the his- 
torian will repeat, but not a word beyond. This is 
because the historian is intent on writing history. 
The Bible historians had no such intention. The 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE 



31 



rabbis were wise who set the historians among the 
prophets ; that is, among the preachers. They wrote 
not for information but for edification. They cared 
for moral values. If a competent critic could as- 
semble them to-day, and lecture them upon their 
negiigencies and ignorances, they would listen with- 
out the slightest stirring of compunction. These 
matters of statistics were of no interest to them. 
Their desire was to make the men of old time live 
again, and this they accomplished by bringing to the 
record the humanizing influences of inspiration. They 
made the patriots talk. They told what Isaac said 
to Abraham as they walked along with wood and fire 
but with no lamb to the place of sacrifice ; and what 
Moses said to Joshua as they came down the steeps 
of Sinai with the ten commandments in their hands, 
" What is that noise ? " says Moses. " It sounds to 
me/' says Joshua, " like fighting. Those are the 
shouts of men in battle." " No, no," says Moses, 
" that is not shouting, those men are singing. They 
are worshiping an idol." The purpose of this con- 
versation is to bring us into the presence of these 
men. The ideal of the writer is not accuracy but 
reality. He desires first our interest, then our good. 
St. Paul expresses both the mind and the method 
of the Bible historian when he says, " All these things 
happened for examples, and they are written for our 
admonition." 

The unconventional realism of these historians is 
equalled by their frankness. They give an account 



32 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



of the sins of the saints. When St. Paul addresses 
the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are 
at Colosse, and urges them to put away anger, wrath, 
malice, blasphemy and filthy communication, and to 
lie not one to another, we perceive that these saints 
are still in the making. And we learn to our surprise 
and encouragement that saints may be constructed 
out of these unpromising materials. And this the 
long list of Bible saints confirms. They were of our 
kind, partakers of our human nature, contending like 
us with temptation, and sometimes falling like us 
into ignominious defeat, finding it hard to be good. 
Then we say, " If they could go on in spite of these 
faults and sins into spiritual attainment and mastery 
we can do the same." We find that the Bible, like 
our Saviour, is a friend of sinners. These Bible 
people, instead of being removed far up out of the 
range of our understanding and sympathy, were of 
like passions with us, and hold out hands of help to 
us. Jacob lies to his father and defrauds his brother, 
but he gets the better of all that, and wins the blessing 
of God. So it is with His sons and daughters ; so it 
may be with us. These frank pages give us hope 
and strength. They are an efficient revelation of 
man, efficient for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness, able to make men wise unto 
salvation. 

The Bible is efficient not only because it is a revela- 
tion of man but because it is a revelation of God. 
The most important possession of any man is his 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE 



33 



idea of God. Because that is his interpretation of 
the world. Even the man who, as he supposes, has no 
use for God and never thinks of God, is profoundly 
influenced by that indifference or disbelief. It may 
not perceptibly affect his moral life: for he brings 
with him a Christian inheritance, and he lives in the 
midst of Christian influences, and these conditions 
provide him with the moral standards which depend 
on the Christian idea of God. Even so, temptation 
is a very different experience to the man for whom 
there is no God, and to the man who believes that the 
God of all the earth cares whether he does right or 
wrong, and who says, " Thou God seest me." He 
who is persuaded by a reading of the Bible to forsake 
an evil life may be urged and helped to that decision 
by the revelation of man therein contained, but com- 
monly the determining fact is a realization of God. 
The man is here assured of the existence of God and 
of the righteousness of God, and thereby his whole 
life is interpreted anew, and he changes it into con- 
sistency with this new meaning. 

Also he is here taught in detail what God desires 
of us, and he perceives that there are ideals of con- 
duct which are very imperfectly indicated by our 
instincts. He begins to understand what our Lord 
meant when he said, " Such and such is the right- 
eousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, but you must 
exceed that. Such and such is the standard of the 
Publicans and of the Gentiles, but I say unto you 
other than that." That is, there is a behavior and 



34 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



a spirit which is natural among men, so natural that 
it is akin to the ethics of the animals, but with the 
revelation of the nature and of the will of God in 
this book there comes into society a different ideal 
and a better way of living. Accordingly, this book, 
distributed and read and followed in any community 
raises the standard of the common life, drives out 
dishonesty, and impurity, and unbrotherliness, and 
makes the town a suburb of the city of God, 

Moreover, the Bible teaches not only that God is, 
and is righteous, but that God is love. Thus it is 
related not only to the sin but to the pain of the world. 
Pain comes, sometimes in the form of sickness, some- 
times in the form of disappointment, sometimes in the 
form of affliction: and then we realize that all our 
consolation depends upon the revelation of God. If 
there is no God ; there is no consolation. A man may 
call upon the resources of his will, and march breast 
forward, but he has no hope. He stands alone ; alone 
in the midst of a world which is indifferent or hostile. 
And if there is a God whose nature is to be stern 
and exacting, a hard task-master, an omnipotent tyr- 
ant, who regards us only as slaves, then we are in 
a worse case still. Then pain means not that God is 
absent or indifferent but that He is malignant. We 
must propitiate God by the offering of some sacrifice, 
lest He destroy us utterly. 

Thus while it is possible to get along in a sort of 
way in pleasant weather, and in good health, with- 
out thinking much about God, temptation and trouble 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE 



35 



compel us to seek in Him the interpretation of the 
world, and what we find determines both our char- 
acter and our happiness. Only in the Bible is there 
a revelation of God which strengthens men against 
temptation by the knowledge that God is righteous, 
and which consoles men in trouble by the knowledge 
that God is loving. This is why we translate the 
Bible into all languages and send it into all lands. 
The purpose of foreign missions is only remotely the 
eternal salvation of the heathen. We are not greatly 
troubled about that. We believe that in every nation 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is 
accepted with Him. Our concern is with the present 
welfare of these people. We perceive that they lack 
the great truths which are essential to sound moral 
health and to abiding happiness. One of these is the 
truth of human brotherhood, the other is the truth of 
divine fatherhood. These truths interpret life, de- 
termine ideals, and are of imperative importance to 
all men. They are not living truths in any religion 
except that whose sacred book is the Bible. It is, 
indeed, possible to find golden sentences in other 
scriptures, which declare that God is our father and 
that all we are brethren. But the essential fact about 
any Bible is not so much its separate statements as 
its general spirit. A prophet may say this, and a 
saint may say that, but neither saying may get into 
the life of the people or become a vital part of the 
religion. Thus Christ found the two great command- 
ments in the Old Testament. There they were, re- 



36 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



corded and repeated. But when He enforced our love 
of God by the revelation that God is our father, and 
our love of our neighbor by the declaration that our 
neighbor is our brother, He brought into religion a 
new life, which appeared immediately in the creed 
and the conduct of His disciples, and which to this 
day differentiates Christianity from all the religions 
of the race. The missionary goes to communicate 
these new ideas to those who, with all their ancient 
culture, are ignorant of them; and as he goes he car- 
ries this book in his hand, for herein alone, among 
all the sacred books, are these ideas made plain and 
persuasive. 

This plainness and persuasiveness is due not only 
to the ideas themselves but to their association with 
a divine personality. The Bible is efficient because 
it is a revelation of man and because it is a revela- 
tion of God ; but all this revelation meets in Him who 
is at the same time God and man, our Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ. The Bible is efficient because 
it brings man to the knowledge of Him. 

Thus we answer the objections which are easily 
made to the efficiency of the Bible. It is said that 
the morality of the Bible is defective. It is also said 
that the theology of the Bible is intuitive. 

It is true that some of the morality of the Bible 
is defective. Though these defects are sometimes ex- 
aggerated by those who find them a perplexing fact. 
On one point, the Old Testament evidently misses the 
ideal. As regards honesty, as regards purity, as re- 



THE EFFICIENT BIBLE 



37 



gards truth, there is no confusion and no compromise. 
The Old Testament saints do, indeed, offend in all 
these matters, but not without reproof. And their 
offences, as I said, are our encouragement. It can- 
not be denied, however, that they hate their enemies. 
They are not ashamed of it, they are not aware of 
any wrong in it : they hate them with a perfect hatred. 
They desire to wash their footsteps in the blood of 
the ungodly, and to have the tongues of their dogs 
red through the same. But the test and corrective 
of all this is the spirit of Jesus Christ. On through 
these lower lands the march of man sweeps up to 
Him. The changes which have taken place in our 
understanding of the Bible during our own lifetime 
make that absolutely plain. It is no longer thought 
by anybody that the Bible is all of equal value. The 
precedent of Samuel hewing Agag will never again 
be made the sanction of religious tragedy. The Bible 
makes it manifest that hatred is one of the most 
persistent of the passions; but the supreme word of 
the Bible is the word love, and all of the moral com- 
mandments are surpassed or fulfilled in the command- 
ment of the Master, " That ye love one another as I 
have loved you." 

It is true, also, that the theology of the Bible is 
intuitive : that is, it is unargued, it is not the con- 
clusion of a process of reasoning. God is here per- 
ceived immediately. The men who speak in these 
pages have seen God and heard Him. The idea of 
proving the existence of God is as remote from their 



38 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



minds as the idea of proving the existence of the hills 
or of the sea. This is disturbing to those who are 
accustomed to receive truth as the result of physical 
or logical demonstration. But this difficulty is 
largely the consequence of misunderstanding. 
Isaiah's immediate perception of God is akin to 
Newton's perception of the law of gravitation, and 
Darwin's perception of the law of evolution. These 
great truths in religion and in science flash into the 
minds and souls of men, and the proof of them is 
their accord w T ith the general trend of things. Hosea 
suddenly sees that the love of God must be greater 
than the love of man. Of course it must, in the 
inevitable order of values. Our most precious pos- 
sessions are of the intuitive kind, and are beyond 
definition or argument : love, for instance, and rever- 
ence, and conscience and personality. In all these 
matters the certainties are the convictions of the clear- 
est minds and the greatest souls. We lesser persons 
follow them, and when they see more than we do, we 
are grateful that the horizon of truth is not limited 
by our imperfect vision. And here in the Bible is 
man at his best and highest in the person of Jesus 
Christ. Here in time God comes among us, and 
manifests Himself to us, and gives Himself for us, 
and is the way, the truth and the life. 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



" For the work of the ministry." Eph. 4: 12. 

The work of the ministry is the upbuilding of 
character. The minister is concerned with conduct, 
and with the soul as the source of conduct. His bus- 
iness is with the essential being and the daily be- 
havior of humanity. 

The minister deals also, according to the bent of 
his mind, with other phases of his profession. He 
may be interested in philosophy, the aim of which 
is to formulate a system of truth regarding the rela- 
tion between man and God; or in politics the pur- 
pose of which is to determine the best possible admin- 
istration of the kingdom of Heaven, and to get it 
universally established among men; or in thera- 
peutics, that the prayer of faith may heal the sick. 
But his main prevailing concern is with simple hu- 
man conduct. To this he returns from all his studies, 
as the crown of his endeavor. And herein he is con- 
firmed by the best examples, past and present, and by 
the pages of the New Testament. Jesus Christ set the 
emphasis of His life on conduct, on character, on the 
fulfillment of the will of God. AH that He did and 
said had that at the heart of it. 

The upbuilding of character is the most import- 
ant work which can be done for society. All social 

39 



40 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



progress, all social happiness, the success of states, 
depends on conduct. Nations have rarely fallen into 
ruin by reason of poverty. On the contrary, the 
prayer of the wise citizen has always been. " In all 
time of our prosperity, good Lord deliver us." The 
nations, the crash of whose calamity still echoes in 
the pages of history, were rich and victorious. The 
soldier and the statesman, the merchant and the 
banker, the architect and the poet, had served them 
splendidly. They seemed to be strong and great ever- 
lastingly. But they lost their good character, and los- 
ing that, lost everything. The man who is working in 
behalf of character is the most useful person in the 
community. His is the indispensable profession. 
All our industries, all our successes, all our institu- 
tions, depend upon the success of his exertions. 

All of the occupations of the ministry are of value 
and importance in proportion as they minister to 
character. They are to be estimated by their bearing 
on conduct. 

The Church, for example, is for a moral purpose. 
There are societies whose intention is fulfilled in the 
pleasure or in the pride, or — at best — in the profit 
of the members. They are exclusive companies, each 
for its own sake. A part of the satisfaction of be- 
longing to them is contained in the fact that the 
privilege of membership is not a common possession. 
We are within and most of our neighbors are without, 
and we like it on that account. By-laws are enacted 
for the purpose of keeping the stout fence in repair. 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



41 



And within the fence, money is freely spent to in- 
crease the pride and joy, — sometimes the power, — of 
the society. This sort of thing is a club or a party. 
The Church is totally different. It is properly inter- 
ested not in itself but in the surrounding world, for 
whose benefit it exists. Its buildings, its services, its 
officers, its customs, its plans and its progress are to 
be valued in strict proportion to their moral efficiency. 
If they bring men into obedience to the ten command- 
ments, they are worth while; if they do not do this 
thing, they are a misuse of energy. 

The work of the ministry, then, is a man's work. 
It is the most serious, the most responsible, the most 
important, the most necessary of all occupations. If 
the number of ministers should be greatly diminished 
so as to cripple the efficiency of the order, or if the 
ministers should neglect their proper business, the 
welfare of the whole community would be put in 
peril. Each of these disasters has taken place, in 
various lands and at various times, and will take 
place again. The last time in this country was at the 
beginning of the last century. People have been 
alarmed for several years by a decrease in the number 
of candidates for the ministry. That situation has 
changed already. But at its worst, a comparison 
between our own day and the conditions of a hun- 
dred years ago is like a comparison between a dry 
season and a famine. Out of all such disasters, 
the ministry has come into new strength and conse- 



42 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



era t ion and power. It has verified the prophecy 
about the gates of hell. 

The work of the ministry is filled with variety and 
novelty. In religion, as in every other department of 
human affairs, there is need of change to meet the 
demands of changed conditions. The minister, like 
the merchant, must have regard to his constituency. 
He must be ready, with all freedom, to give up some 
things for which they do not care, and to substitute 
for them others which they wish. He may not ap- 
prove their taste. The fisherman may wonder at the 
preferences of the fish. But he who would catch 
either fish or men must adapt himself to them. 

The Sabbath, as our Lord said, speaking of one of 
the most ancient and revered and beneficial institu- 
tions of the Church of his day, the Sabbath was made 
for man, and is to be kept in such a manner as shall 
be most helpful to the most men. He dealt with it in 
so free a way that all the strict people were scandal- 
ized. 

Presently in the Apostolic Church a question arose 
as to the sacrament of circumcision. This, like the 
Sabbath, was a cardinal feature of the ecclesiastical 
organization. Its origin was in the remotest past, 
and it had the sanction of all the law and the proph- 
ets. It was considered of such indispensable im- 
portance that conservative churchmen declared stoutly 
that without it there was no salvation. The Apos- 
tolic Church met in convention and resolved to dis- 
pense with it. IsTo step so radical, so revolutionary 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



43 



has ever been taken by any assembly of orderly Chris- 
tians. The subtraction of the episcopate by the Prot- 
estant reformers was nothing to it. " It seems good." 
they said, " to the Holy Spirit and to us to contra- 
dict the Bible." So they contradicted the Bible, and 
saved the Church. 

These dealings with the observance of the Sabbath 
and with the rite of circumcision are the classic in- 
stances and sanctions of a change of procedure to meet 
a change of conditions. I refer to them to show how 
varied is the work of the ministry, and how much 
originality, and even audacity, is needed in it. The 
idea that parochial organization, or even the con- 
duct of services, is a mere matter of routine, a rep- 
etition over and over of last year's performances, 
and that it is therefore a dull affair, calling for the 
slow energies of dull people, is disproved by the 
daily experience of every efficient minister and of 
every living parish. 

The supreme concern of the minister being the ad- 
vancement of character, and character being seriously 
affected by the circumstances in the midst of which 
men live, the minister addresses himself to theses 
circumstances. Bent and wages and hours of labor, 
domestic life, the learning of trades, the condition 
of houses, the privileges of wholesome amusement — 
these are as much a part of his business as diet and 
drainage are a part of the business of the physician. 
They affect the health of the soul. 

When Dr. Bainsford came to New York, twenty- 



44 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



five years ago, he found that St. George's Church 
was empty. The church had been a tower of 
strength. Its methods had been highly efficient. 
Gradually, however, a change had come about— first 
in the neighborhood in general, then in the parish in 
particular. People began to move away. First one 
influential family and then another departed. They 
left their houses behind them, and their places were 
immediately filled. The parish had more people in 
it than ever. But some of the new people were tra- 
ditionally alien to the church, and all of them were 
intensely absorbed in the struggle for existence. The 
methods which had formerly succeeded at St. George's 
would not work. The services on Sunday did not 
attract the new neighbors, and between Sundays the 
church doors were shut. The idea of the church had 
been that between Sundays, people could very well 
look after themselves. In the pleasant houses of the 
parish the excellent fathers and mothers would attend 
to the upbringing of the sons and daughters. And 
that was a good working theory as long as the houses 
were pleasant and the family life w T as natural and 
wholesome. But when Dr. Eainsford came, he found 
that the family had ceased to be the unit of the 
parish. The conditions of tenement-house existence 
left the children without sufficient home instruction, 
and turned many of them out of the family at an 
early age to make their living. The unit of the par- 
ish was the individual. 

The recognition of this fact was the corner-stone 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



45 



of the parish house, and of the institutional church. 
It was found that in order to build up character, in 
order to maintain Christian conduct, in order to ad- 
vance the Kingdom of God under the new condi- 
tions, a new emphasis must be placed upcm the in- 
junctions of the Fourth Commandment. The first 
sentence of that commandment, " Remember that 
thou keep holy the Sabbath day," the church had 
faithfully observed. Now it was perceived that the 
second sentence also called for the obedience of the 
Church : " Six days shalt thou labor." On these days 
the church endeavored to take the place of the family. 
It assembled the children, and taught them the hon- 
est work and the pleasant play which are the proper 
birthright of the race, and in the midst of which re- 
ligion thrives. Thereafter, in all like districts of 
great cities, and wherever similar conditions existed, 
the minister was not only a prophet and a priest, but 
he was a promoter of social industries, a deviser of 
new ways of attracting, interesting, teaching and 
developing the youth of the neighborhood. This de- 
manded a new kind of ability. It called to the minis- 
try men whose prevailing motive was a longing to 
be practically and immediately useful. 

This is the contemporary situation. A generation 
ago the ministry was a profession for saints and 
scholars, that is, for young men who liked to say their 
prayers and read. These are still appropriate occu- 
pations for the minister. But there is a demand to- 
day for young men of a robust, active habit, who 



46 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



like to be out of doors, in the street, among people; 
who have an executive ability and are able to do 
things. 

This social service, which the minister is render- 
ing in his parish, he is also performing for the good 
of the larger community, of which his parish is a part. 
The minister has always served the public more or 
less. The old name " parson " signifies not only 
his dignity, but his leadership. At best, he is the 
person of the place, the chief citizen. He is not con- 
tent to be confined within the parish limits. He per- 
ceives that the adjective " parochial " implies a con- 
dition of ignorance and inexperience, and suggests a 
narrowness of mind resulting from the smallness of 
one's interests. He is resolved not to be parochial. 
He will take his part in the undertakings of the world. 
In his endeavor to promote the cause of righteousness, 
he finds that the individual is affected by general 
social conditions. The people of his parish are 
tempted by the contemporary temptations. That is, 
the good and ill of social life are pervasive, like the 
qualities of the air. In a town where the ills of social 
life are many and contagious, the efforts of the 
minister to help his people to be good are like the 
efforts of a householder to keep his family in good 
health on the borders of a malarious swamp. The 
thing for the householder to do is to join with his 
neighbors in the draining of the swamp. The thing 
for the minister to do is to take part with his fellow 
citizens in the suppression of evil. 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



47 



The growth of cities and the consequent aggrava- 
tion of moral evils have made new problems. To 
these the new relationships of modern business have 
added. The work of the minister is widened by these 
changes. He is to settle matters of casuistry of 
which St. Alphonso Liguori knew nothing. The old 
offences against the ten commandments remain, but 
there are others also, and the old sermons are not 
sufficient. The Ten Commandments are to be in- 
terpreted and applied to modern life. 

The city itself is a new problem. In the year 1775, 
when George Washington took command of the 
American army, and James Watt began the manu- 
facture of steam engines, the city as we know it did 
not exist. It is an industrial fact, the product of 
economic forces. The new aspects of the social ser- 
vice of the Christian minister proceed from the con- 
ditions of the new city. To these conditions, the 
Church has not yet adjusted itself. We know how 
to administer parishes: we do not yet know how to 
administer cities. The strategy of the merchant is 
better than the strategy of the minister. The shop, 
and even the saloon, are better placed than the 
church with reference to the general life of the city. 
Indeed, it is only of late that the Church has become 
aware of the city, and of its responsibility regarding 
it. For the most part, each minister has devoted 
himself to the welfare of his own parish, and the city 
has been neglected. "Now, with the new concern for 
the city, with the rise everywhere of civic conscious- 



48 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



ness, there comes a new extension of a new kind of 
ministry, and an opportunity for a new kind of min- 
ister. The Church, needs Christian statesmen. The 
problems connected with the contemporary social 
situation make a place in the Church for the largest 
possible qualities of leadership. For such a man the 
ministry offers at this moment the best opportunity 
in the world. 

What kind of a man should undertake the work of 
the ministry ? What are the requirements ? 

He should be sound in body. The work is exact- 
ing and an invalid is incapable of it. Even one who 
needs to take a good deal of care of himself may well 
think twice before he ventures. 'No doubt but that 
the man who works in the mill believes that the 
minister has both a clean and an easy job. But the 
minister works with his nerves and the success of his 
work depends upon their good condition. Thus the 
man in weak health is both physically and tempera- 
mentally disqualified. There was a time in England 
when the clergy were described as having " a gently 
complaining disposition." That was a time when the 
clergy counted for almost nothing in the life of the 
nation. For in all work in which human nature is a 
large factor, the thing that tells is personality. Men 
must be at their best in order to deal well with their 
neighbors. 

This is eminently true as regards the minister's 
thought and expression. Theology is greatly depend- 
ent upon temperament, and temperament is largely 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



49 



determined by the state of health. The history of 
modem Christendom would have been much changed 
if Calvin had taken more exercise. It is significant 
that Calvin as a lad at school, never played a game. 
He was a sedentary person, who wrought out a sys- 
tem of divinity, sitting at a table in the light of a 
lamp. It is true that Jonathan Edwards used to 
ride on horseback. Out he went along the JTorthamp- 
ton roads into the green country. But he carried with 
him a bundle of blank paper and brought back a 
bundle of manuscript. The horse walked all the way. 
Edwards never rode for pleasure. 

A notable emphasis is placed in both the Testa- 
ments on cheerfulness. The psalms, for example, are 
forever inciting us to rejoice and be glad and make 
a merry noise. In the parable of the prodigal son, 
it is the mean brother who objects to music and 
dancing. But cheerfulness is largely a matter of 
sound physical condition. The pale theologian is not 
to be trusted. Pallor and heresy go naturally to- 
gether. " I think/' said Lowell in an unpublished let- 
ter, " that Providence originally intended me for a 
preacher, but spoiled the job by kneading in a quan- 
tity of humor." But humor is in fact one of the sav- 
ing graces of the ministry, for it means good health 
and spirits, and plenty of human sympathy, and a 
stout faith in the goodness of God. Many a man for 
lack of it has made shipwreck of his hopes. 

The young minister should have a good education. 
I do not refer now to the technical training he gets 



50 



THE YEAft OF GRACE 



in a theological school. That is highly important; 
but it follows the act whereby a man devotes himself 
to the ministry. I am considering the man in the act 
of choosing. He ought to be liberally educated, he 
ought to have studied the humanities. These acad- 
emic words are full of meaning. A liberal education 
liberates one from the bonds of ignorance, from the 
barriers of prejudice, from the follies of self-conceit. 
The humanities bring one into sympathetic acquaint- 
ance with human nature. These studies are most 
advantageously pursued in college. The young man 
who has a mind to be a minister ought to be a col- 
lege man. This is partly for the sake of the learn- 
ing which that condition implies, and partly in order 
that he may be neither ashamed nor afraid in the 
presence of educated men. For going to college, like 
going to Europe, which is akin to it, is a form of 
novitiate through which one enters into a certain class 
of society. It gives a man a kind of standing not 
only with his neighbors but with himself. 

In the curriculum of the college, nothing is so 
liberalizing and humanizing as literature. Science 
and mathematics are excellent, to inform a man with 
regard to the world in which he lives, and to give 
him habits of patient and accurate observation. But 
for the minister's business there is nothing like books. 
Eeading and reading and reading for the love of it, 
for the joy of it, for the pure delight of the fellowship 
of noble souls, — this is what a man needs who intends 
to be a minister. He who knows by heart a play 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



51 



of Shakespeare, or an essay of Bacon, is likely to be 
of more use in the orders of the Church than he who, 
lacking this, has committed to memory the Thirty- 
nine Articles. A familiar friendship with the heroes 
of Walter Scott is better for the parish priest than 
a like familiarity with the saints of the tenth century. 
The specialist is in most professions a successful per- 
son, but the clergyman's specialty is human nature. 
He must know God and man, and for this purpose his 
text-book is first the Bible — the supreme book — and 
then the continuation of the Bible in the pages of 
philosophers and historians and novelists and poets. 

These two qualifications, physical and intellectual, 
I have stated without reservation; but reservation 
must be made. Men of imperfect health and of little 
learning have defied all probabilities and done splen- 
did work in the ministry. These men, however, have 
had a third qualification to which both the body and 
the book are subordinate. They have had social en- 
thusiasm. They have been profoundly interested in 
people, and gifted in understanding human nature. 
For the work of the ministry, as I have said again 
and again, is the betterment of society. The mission 
of the minister is to deal with conduct. In order to 
discharge this mission competently he must know 
men. He must be aware how they live, what they 
care for, how they are tempted, what they need. 
Here, self-examination helps. The minister begins 
by knowing himself. But this by itself alone leads 
to an eccentric preaching in which the minister ad- 



52 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



dresses himself to conditions which exist only in his 
own soul. Sometimes the sermons for which the 
preacher cares most are quite uninteresting to the 
majority of the congregation and the services which 
delight him displease and annoy them. The parish 
priest must be a man among men. He must not stand 
apart from life, but must go out into it, following 
his Master's steps. It was said of an unsuccessful 
minister that he was invisible six days of the week 
and incomprehensible on the seventh. The two things 
go together. 

With regard to two other qualifications for the 
ministry I shall say little. They are the most im- 
portant of all, but their importance is so obvious that 
they do not need to be emphasized. I mean the moral 
and spiritual qualities. 

The minister who is to set forward the cause of 
righteousness must be a man of righteousness him- 
self. He is to be the advocate of honesty and purity, 
and peace and quietness, and neighborly courtesy and 
kindness. He must be the pattern of these virtues. 
His face, his voice, his customary manner, his point 
of view, his own rule of life, — these are his con- 
tinual and convincing sermon. I do not mean that 
he must be a perfect saint. I am not sure that a per- 
fect saint would be successful in the ministry. He 
might find it difficult to understand our homely de- 
fects, our petty follies, our readiness to fall into the 
snares of the devil. He might be out of sympathy 
with us. The helpful minister is he who is tempted 



THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY 



53 



in all things like as we are, who does not account 
himself to have attained his ideal, but who can say in 
all humility, that he is pressing forward to it. He 
is an imperfect saint, like Peter, who denied his 
Master ; like Paul, who said, " The good that I 
would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that 
I do." But standing like us in the midst of imper- 
fection, he has a passionate longing to do better. He 
prays and strives after righteousness. 

This implies as the crown of all requirements, a 
spiritual quality. Goodness is not enough. Morality 
has been despised by men of religion, and, when the 
word is properly defined, has deserved their con- 
tempt. For the difference between morality and re- 
ligion is like the difference between the body and the 
soul. Religion is morality into which God has 
breathed the breath of life. It is conduct which re- 
veals love. It is an endeavor to live aright, not from 
motives of cold prudence, nor from lack of natural 
passion, but in the name and for the sake and with 
the love of God. Thus the centre both of Christian 
believing and of Christian living is Jesus Christ, in 
whom the love of God is manifested. The man who 
is qualified for the ministry is devoted to Him, has 
Him in his heart as the hero of his affection, and the 
pattern of his life and the savior of his soul. 

Whoever with these requirements enters into the 
work of the ministry will be blessed with its great 
rewards, for the chief reward is the privilege of 
doing the work. It is the consciousness of being 



54 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



useful. It is the sense of mission and the joy of 
serving God and man. This is a reward so fine and 
satisfying that many have been content to go on in 
the ministry with no other return. They have been 
poor when they might have been rich. They have 
been servants when they might have been masters. 
They have cheerfully abandoned even the happiness 
of appreciation and have entered into inevitable un- 
popularity. The prophets did this, so did the apostles, 
finding all their recompense in God. In days of 
moral stress and strain, in the face of an evil and 
obstinate generation, in the performance of duties 
which ensured the hatred of the wicked, and were 
embittered by the indifference of the good, these men 
went straight forward, giving up most of the things 
which are commonly accounted precious, and never 
wishing to take an easier course. 

In quiet times, the ministry brings human as well 
as divine rewards. In the joyous exercise of all his 
faculties for good ends, in occupations in themselves 
delightful, in the reading of great books for his own 
and his people's sake, in the opportunity of expres- 
sion, in the privilege of partaking with his neighbors 
in their deepest sorrows and in their deepest joys, 
and in the affection of his people for him, answering 
his affection for them,— here the competent minister 
finds continual happiness. Here he receives the bene- 
diction of his ministry, satisfying and eternal. 



THE OLD HUNDREDTH 



" O be ye joyful in the Lord, all ye lands." Ps. 100: 1. 

The Old Hundredth hymn is so named because it 
is a translation of the hundredth psalm. The adjec- 
tive implies not only antiquity but affection. The 
words and the music are associated in our minds 
with the piety of our parents and our grandparents, 
and are thereby expressive of pleasant and profitable 
associations. The hymn and the accompanying tune 
signify a long tradition of upright and devout living. 

The Hundredth Psalm sings the praises of missions. 
The lands whose people are here called to be joyful 
in the Lord are foreign lands. Here are held out 
hands of welcome to strange nations with their strange 
religions. The spirit is not one of conquest, — the 
Lord exalted among the heathen, the kings of the 
earth gathered and gone by together, and the idols 
flung to the moles and to the bats, — this is not a song 
of triumph over a defeated paganism. It is a song 
of brotherhood. Up we look into the face of the one 
God of all, and summon these our brethren that we 
may praise Him together. 

The psalmist stands, where we stand to-day, within 
the boundaries of spiritual privilege, where the truth 
of God is taught and the grace of God is ministered ; 
and he looks out, as we look, into those vast regions of 

55 



56 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the world where God is not known as we know Him, 
where the ways of men are not as our ways, nor 
their thoughts as our thoughts; and his heart goes 
out to them in sympathy. There is not a breath here 
of hostility, nor of condescension, nor even of crit- 
icism. He does not hate his brethren because they 
are different from him, neither does he say that they 
are blind and deaf and therefore ignorant of God. 
God, he says, has made us, and not we ourselves. 
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. 
He calls upon the Gentiles to be glad, and to come 
before God's presence with a song. Here is his own 
song, in the joy of his soul, and he asks them all to 
join in the great praise of God. 

Such an invitation, in order to have a sincere mean- 
ing, must be conveyed to those who are thus bidden. 
It must be translated out of enthusiastic poetry into 
the plain prose of action. The hymn is processional. 
It signifies that we who sing it are in possession of 
great joy, and that we desire to bring others into the 
light and warmth of our own happiness, and that we 
honestly intend to do it as best we may. The psalm 
is a missionary march. We advance in step with 
it to meet the Wise Men of the East. 

For these mysterious pilgrims, with their gold and 
frankincense and myrrh, represent the world without. 
In they come, from the far East and out of the dark 
night, as strangers who have asked their way. Their 
looks, their dress and their speech are strange. As 
for their religion, nobody knows what it was, except 



THE OLD HUNDREDTH 



57 



that it was not the religion of the Old Testament. 
They held some remote Oriental creed: they said 
their prayers to God under some name sanctified by 
associations into which we cannot enter. Out of 
Arabia, or Persia, or India they came. But all the 
Arabians and the Persians and the Indians came 
with them. The great East came with those men to 
the cradle of Christ, as afterward, in the person of a 
group of Greeks, the great West came to his cross. 

The Hundredth Psalm is our appropriate greeting. 
Here the church welcomes the world. Here we hold 
out hands of invitation, singing in chorus, " O be 
joyful in the Lord all ye lands, serve the Lord with 
gladness and come before his presence with a song. 
Be ye sure that the Lord he is God : it is He that hath 
made us and not we ourselves. We are His people 
and the sheep of His pasture. O go your way into 
His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with 
praise. Be thankful unto Him and speak good of 
His name. For the Lord is gracious, His mercy is 
everlasting, and His truth endureth from generation 
to generation." And lo, an innumerable multitude, of 
all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, re- 
spond in answering chorus, with angels and arch- 
angels, " Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanks- 
giving and honor and power and might be unto our 
God forever and ever." 

The story of the Wise Men is filled with a sense of 
the dignity of the pagan East. We call the Wise Men 
kings not because they are so styled in the narrative, 



58 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



but because they behave themselves in such a kingly 
way, with the noble manners, with the splendid grace, 
of ideal courts. We are to-day returning in some 
measure to this old appreciation. We have despised 
the East. We have inspected it with impertinent cu- 
riosity, and with the easy and foolish amusement of 
ignorant minds. We have found it different from 
the West, and have undervalued it in consequence. 
The ancient art, the ancient civilization, the ancient 
philosophy, the ancient religion of India, of Japan, 
of China, are only now being discovered. We have 
regarded the Orient as the wise men of the Epiphany 
were regarded by the street boys of Jerusalem. ISTot 
only our merchants but our missionaries have lived 
in the ports of the Pacific like men in mean hovels 
under the shadow of a great cathedral. The man in 
the mean house lives his small life, eats, drinks and 
does his daily errands, and perceives but dimly the 
difference between the cathedral and the hill. All the 
skill of architects, and the labor of masons, and the 
cunning of carvers of stone and of wood ; all the old 
history wherein the sea of human life has surged and 
beaten against these ancient walls; all the prayers 
which are daily prayed here by priests and people; 
all of this is of no concern to him. So men have 
lived in sight of the immemorial antiquity of the 
East, untouched by it, ignorant of it, crudely and im- 
pertinently and vulgarly contemptuous of it. The 
Wise Men, with solemn dignity following the star, 



THE OLD HUNDRETH 



59 



and with sober courtesy falling down in reverence be- 
fore the Child, teach us a different lesson. 

Also the story of the Wise Men emphasizes the 
contribution of the East. The kings come with their 
gifts, with gold and frankincense and myrrh, the 
products of their own land ; and these they lay down 
at the feet of Christ. Herein again they represent 
our new impression of the Orient. The idea has been 
that we had all to teach and they had all to learn. 
They were benighted folk, and all the light was in 
our lamp. They bowed down to wood and stone, and 
we, who know better than that, would instruct them 
in the folly of such grotesque religion. And our mis- 
sionaries went in that superior spirit. The son of the 
village blacksmith, educated in the district school, 
and afterwards taught a smattering of Latin and 
Greek and Hebrew, started from his native village 
in Massachusetts or Vermont to convert the philos- 
ophers of India. The dislike which some people still 
have for foreign missions proceeds largely from the 
mistaken idea that that sort of thing is still going 
on. The man who says bluntly that he does not be- 
lieve in foreign missions because he thinks that the 
first thing to do is to convert the heathen at home is 
honest in so saying; but he is as ignorant of his own 
mind as he is of the work of foreign missions. When 
he comes to look into his own soul he perceives that 
he is advocating a procedure which if applied to his 
own business would bring him to ruin in a year. No 
corporation says, Let us first get our goods into the 



60 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



hands of everybody in Boston, then we may go on 
to make a market in Providence, in Jfew York, in 
Chicago, and in San Francisco. And no church says 
such a thing. It is neither good business nor good 
religion. No, there is an undefined difficulty in the 
objector's mind, a dim disturbing perception both 
of the greatness and of the goodness of the East. The 
East has truth to teach us. What it is, whether of 
doctrine or of emotion, whether of revelation or of 
inspiration, we cannot say as yet. But all the prece- 
dents of history predict that as the Christian relig- 
ion was interpreted in one way by the Greeks and 
in another way by the Latins, so it shall be inter- 
preted in still another way by the mind of the East. 
And as the Greeks made their distinctive contribu- 
tion by formulating the truth of Christianity into a 
creed, and the Latins made their characteristic con- 
tribution by organizing the life of Christianity into 
a church, so shall India and Japan and China make 
some great and valuable and determining contribu- 
tion. The wise men of the East came with their 
gifts, and shall come again bringing their gifts with 
them. 

In the Hundredth psalm the West meets them as 
they come. Here we extend our hands of fraternal 
greeting. Here their courtesy encounters our hospit- 
ality, and their contribution is answered by our con- 
tribution to them. What is our contribution? What 
has the West to give the East in the matter of relig- 



THE OLD HUNDRETH 



61 



ion ? What do our missionaries carry with them, 
as they go to return the visit of the Epiphany pil- 
grims ? So far as this question is answered in this 
psalm, they carry the blessing of great joy. This is 
what we have in our religion which they lack in 
theirs. And this possession and the consequent priv- 
ilege of sharing it make a great part of the meaning 
of missions. 

The initial need in all preaching and in all main- 
taining of missions is a certainty of the unique and 
inestimable value of our own possession. If what 
we have is but a common thing, of small importance, 
and no better than what our neighbors have already, 
then we need not be much concerned about sharing 
it. Our neighbor will be no worse, and we will be no 
worse, if we keep it quietly to ourselves. But if we 
have a blessing which is essential to human happi- 
ness, if people need it in order to live even this pres- 
ent life in peace, if for lack of it the hearts of men 
and women and little children are sad to-day, then if 
we keep that to ourselves, if we are content to be 
happy while they suffer, we injure not them only but 
our own souls. For nobody can live a selfish life and 
at the same time preserve the health of his soul. 

The appeal of missions tests our convictions as 
to the superiority and sufficiency and necessity of the 
Christian religion. I mean particularly with re- 
spect to this present life. We are regaining the gos- 
pel meaning of the word " salvation." It has been 
referred to the future. It has been defined as an, 



62 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



escape from the penalties of sin in the rewards of the 
world to come. There was a time when the preacher 
would stop in the midst of his missionary sermon 
and bid the congregation listen to the ticking of the 
church clock; and he would tell them that at every 
tick the soul of a dying pagan sank beneath the sur- 
face of the lake of fire and brimstone. We do not 
believe that. We believe, on the contrary, that the 
eternal Father is the universal Father, that all who 
live were not only made by Him but, as the psalm 
says, are His people, and the sheep of His pasture, 
and that the prayers which are truly prayed in 
heathen shrines and in the depths of savage jungles 
ascend as straight to the listening heart of God as the 
petitions of the priest standing at a Christian altar. 
The everlasting salvation of the souls of the heathen 
is not dependent on the Christian missionary. 

The salvation of which the hundredth psalm sings 
is a present salvation. The immediate matter is to 
be delivered out of the bonds of those sins which do 
so easily and constantly beset us, and out of the 
errors which fill our souls with fear, and out of the 
conditions which hinder our best growth and hap- 
piness. Christ brought life as well as immortality to 
light. He came that we might have life abundantly. 
The immediate emphasis is on this present life; out 
of which shall grow whatever future God in his 
love and goodness shall provide. 

But the quality of life depends on our idea of 
God. This is not so evident on pleasant days, and 



THE OLD HUNDREDTH 



63 



in the midst of the blessings of health and security 
and sufficient fortune, when all goes well. Then we 
may easily imagine that the quality of life depends 
upon ourselves. It is when we are in urgent need 
of happiness, when we lack it, when we hold out 
eager hands to it and it is out of touch and sight ; it 
is when we are in desperate need of comfort, when 
the sky is black and the foundations of the earth are 
out of course, and books are vain, and friends are 
vain, and the body is a hindrance or a torture, and 
we are players in a tragedy in awful earnest; then 
the sources of happiness are tested one by one, and 
we know what they are worth. And then we know 
that it is elementally and everlastingly true that the 
quality of life depends absolutely on our idea of God. 
Not that it is thus determined only in the crisis and 
despair of life, but that there the truth about it is 
written across the sky in great, unescapable letters 
which we cannot help but read. Then we understand 
what the Epiphany psalm means when it calls to all 
the lands to be joyful in the Lord, and we know why 
it goes on in the next breath to say, " Be ye sure that 
the Lord He is God." 

For the Lord is the name of God as He is revealed 
in the two Testaments. God is believed on and 
adored under a hundred names, in a hundred relig- 
ions, and each name is the symbol of the idea of 
God which is in that nation's heart. And when we 
say that the Lord is God, we mean that God is such 
as Isaiah said, and as Jesus Christ both said and 



64 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



lived. We mean that God cares ; we mean that God 
lives; we mean that the glory of God, and the good- 
ness of God are seen in the face of Jesus Christ. 

The essential difference between the religion of 
the Bible and the religions of other lands is in the 
idea of God. The most precious of our spiritual pos- 
sessions is not a code of ethics, it is not a plan of sal- 
vation, it is not an ideal of the brotherhood of man; 
it is a conception of God, revealed in the souls of the 
prophets, manifested in Jesus Christ, confirmed by 
our best reason, and satisfying the entire range of 
our desires. It is upon this conception of God that 
all the excellencies of Christian doctrine, and all the 
graces of Christian conduct, and all the aspirations 
and hopes of Christian progress are founded. Be- 
cause this idea of God is higher than any other we 
maintain the essential superiority of the Christian 
religion. This is at once the justification and the 
necessity of missions. We have a joy, we say, which 
gives a new meaning to every other joy of man, and 
that is the joy of serving God with gladness. We 
possess a truth about God to which the men of 
China, of India, of Japan and of Arabia have not 
attained. We have learned that God is good and 
desires our good, and that God is love and to be 
loved. And that is known — think of it! — that is 
known no where on earth, except in lands which 
have been enlightened by the Bible. 

The message of missions is this truth of God and 
this joy which rests upon it. What we want to do 



THE OLD HUNDREDTH 



65 



is to enlarge the horizon of joy that it may surround 
all lands. We go in all humility, and meet the vast 
and ancient creeds of the East with all respect and 
reverence. We do not say, " I am holier than thou ! " 
nor do we say, " I am wiser than thou ! " But we 
do say, " I have a word of joy abiding and eternal. 
I have a medicine for pain. I have a remedy for 
sorrow." The supreme civilizing truth, the interpre- 
tation of life, the secret of progress, the assurance of 
satisfaction, is in our possession, in our sole posses- 
sion. Christianity alone, with Judaism out of which 
it came, teaches that there is a good and helpful God. 

We hardly begin to appreciate it ourselves. We 
enter but a little way, and timidly, into the gar- 
dens of delight of which we have the key. That is 
why the appeal of missions falls sometimes on un- 
heeding ears. The good Christian is not of this in- 
different company. Made by God the Father, re- 
deemed by God the Son, sanctified by God the Holy 
Ghost, one only God, he knows by the experiences of 
his own life the immeasureable blessedness of the 
Christian faith in God. He knows that without it 
the world is filled with confusion, pain is a problem, 
day and night are set about with fear, and death is the 
end. He would have all men everywhere serve the 
Lord with gladness and come before His presence 
with a song. To that consummation he freely gives 
his prayers, his means, when possible himself, till the 
horizon of joy shall touch the whole great circle of 
the earth. 



WHY THE WOELD IS NO BETTEE 



Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of 
the creation. 2 Peter 3 : 4. 

That is,' the bad world gets no better. There are 
promises in plenty of a time to come when Christ 
shall reign in power upon the earth, when all the 
kings shall cast their crowns before His throne, and 
all the people give Him glad allegiance. We pray 
for that good time whenever we say the Lord's 
prayer. But we are still praying. The fathers who 
assured us of the approaching kingdom died without 
seeing it, and to-day it seems as far away as ever. All 
things continue as they were from the beginning of 
the creation. 

Nevertheless, all wrongs shall be righted, all ob- 
stacles across the way of social progress shall be re- 
proved. Even now, it is not true that the world con- 
tinues as it was. It is a better world than ever our 
fathers saw. They were misbelivers whose words 
St. Peter quoted in the text. Christian faith and 
Christian hope make a very different assertion, and 
utter a very different prophecy. It is true that social 
progress is so slow that there is a difference of opinion 
among observers as to the direction in which society 
is going: some say that it is going back. But we 

66 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 



67 



know that the promise of the Divine coming holds 
absolutely sure. We know that we have implements 
in our hands which fit the task before us, and tha' 
with them we shall ultimately clear the road straight 
through to the kingdom of heaven. It was under- 
stood long ago that the road was bad, that it was all 
hill and valley. But that was taken into account. 
The task was undertaken in full knowledge of its 
difficulty, and with complete confidence in the tem- 
per of the tools. " Every valley shall be exalted, and 
every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the 
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places 
plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and 
all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the 
Lord hath spoken it" Every obstacle shall be re- 
moved, every difficulty solved, every wrong amended, 
everything set right, in the name of the Lord, by the 
application of the Christian religion. 

Why is it, then, that the Christian religion has not 
already got these good things accomplished. It has 
been administered to society for now these many 
weary centuries, but it has not cured our ills. So- 
ciety stays sick. The diagnosis is confessedly right, 
the medicine is confessedly right, but the patient 
does not recover. What is the matter? Why is it 
that the principles of religion, which in theory fur- 
nish a complete solvent for all our social and eco- 
nomic difficulties, do not as a matter of fact solve 
them ? the bad world does not go on altogether in the 
old way: it is a better world than ever it was. But 



68 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



it is bad enough, after all the evolution and the revo- 
lution. It is a bad world, in spite of us. Why is it 
so obstinately bad ? 

One reason for the apparent inadequacy of spirit- 
ual principles is the indirectness with which they are 
applied to social conduct. 

Thus the unsolved problem of charity is how to 
combine science with affection: how to maintain the 
prudence of the trained visitor without losing the 
generous emotions of uninstructed friendship. As 
it is at present, the wisest plans of the best people 
are met with general suspicion. They perplex both 
rich and poor alike. They are effective, they do good, 
but they do not appeal to popular enthusiasm. They 
have the look of calculation, even of meanness. A 
soup kitchen, a free dinner, a plan to give the poor a 
mess of pottage and at the same time take away their 
birthright, will open a thousand purses out of which 
our excellent methods shall not extract a penny. 
Those things are demonstrably injurious. When 
I say that they cheat the poor of their birthright, I 
mean that they deprive them of their self-respect and 
of the impulse to be independent. People in general 
are warm towards the soup kitchen and cold towards 
the associated charities, because they believe that the 
soup kitchen is a humane institution where the fire 
under the kettles is kindled by brotherly love. They 
will not say anything like that of the charities. 

This perplexity of the rich is also the confusion 
of the poor. The poor man can understand a free 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 



69 



dinner. He may be ignorant of the English lan- 
guage, but he can make out as much as that. The 
friendly visitor, however, bewilders him. Who are 
these well-dressed persons who ask so many questions, 
and then go away without doing anything? who, as 
St. J ames said, say : " Be ye warmed and clothed," 
but provide for that purpose neither coats nor coal ? 
This is a species of friendship which the poor man 
has never before encountered in the course of his ex- 
perience. In the whole block in which he lives, there 
is not such a friend as that. 

This, of course, is not a universal misconception. 
There are many rich who understand the principles 
of modern charity, and believe in them entirely ; and 
there are many poor, who have found the friendly 
visitor a friend indeed. But the fact that the mis- 
conception exists reveals the need of a clearer mani- 
festation of our spirit. In proportion as our new 
knowledge of social conditions compels us to exer- 
cise self-restraint, we are called upon for plainer evi- 
dences of our affection. The impression is that we 
do not care, and that mistaken impression must be 
changed; it must be vigorously lived down. It is 
initially essential that people shall be sure of our 
interest and our individual attention and affection. 
The problem is how to make people sure that we care 
for them, when we do not pay their debts. 

The problem is of large importance, because un- 
less there is such assurance no great good can be ac- 
complished. JTot only the friendly visitor, but the en- 



70 



THE YEAH OF GRACE 



lightened employer, the large-minded public citizen, 
the privileged person in general who is desirous 
somehow to share his possessions with his neighbors, 
everybody who is working along modern social lines 
for the good of others, is concerned with it. To solve 
the problem there must be a deepening of the spirit- 
ual life. There must be a new perception of the 
social meaning of the old antagonism between faith 
and works. Works are what we do, faith is the spirit 
in which we do them. Works are what we have and 
give, faith is what we are. That is, to put it in a 
word, the social worker must be a better Christian. 
In order to bring to the economic difficulties of his 
neighborhood a true solution, he must be directed in 
all that he does by spiritual principles. He must 
go about in the company of God. He must daily 
sacrifice himself, in the spirit of Jesus. He must 
make it plain to rich and poor alike that while he 
does not readily give material assistance, he withholds 
it for a wise and wholly unselfish purpose, and mean- 
while gives himself. The positive must outrun the 
negative in all his plans. Courtesy, consideration, 
patience and faith must prevail in all his dealings. 
He must keep the human quality fresh and strong 
and free from the conventionality of institutions. 
He must reconcile science with affection. 

On the other hand, in the church, it is doctrine and 
discipline which must be reconciled with affection. 
The church is impeded in its endeavors to make the 
world better by a strong suspicion of its sincerity. 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 



71 



The reason why the name of J esus has been applauded 
while the name of the church has been received with 
jeers is that there is no doubt in anybody's mind as to 
the absolutely disinterested affection of Jesus, but 
there is doubt in the minds of many as to the actual 
interest of the church. 

The church is known to be interested in the world 
to come. It has been overheard singing, 

" I'm but a stranger here, 
Heaven is my home ; 
Earth is a desert drear, 
Heaven is my home." 

The natural inference is that the stranger's heart is 
in his home. The stranger feels no personal re- 
sponsibility for the dreary desert. It does not occur 
to him to sink artesian wells into it, or to carry irri- 
gation ditches across it, and thus to plant it with corn 
and vines. What he wants is to get over it as safely 
and as speedily as possible. 

The church is known to be interested in matters 
of doctrine. Unfortunately, it has sometimes seemed 
to the plain citizen as if the doctrine were remotely 
removed from actual life. As a matter of fact, it 
has happened that debates in which the argument of 
violence played much too prominent a part have 
ended at last in the weariness of both sides rather 
than in the victory of either, and the world has gone 
on none the worse for the uncertainty in which the 
truth has rested. There are several questions about 



72 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



which States have been disturbed, and long wars 
raged, which to-day are of concern to nobody. The 
inference is that perhaps some of the matters now 
under sharp discussion are as little worth the time 
and pain which are lavished upon them. This eager 
concern touching metaphysical differences, and the 
hard controversial temper of the Christian disputes, 
have served to discredit the church. It has been felt 
that this would have been impossible had the church 
been honestly interested in the people. 

Thus the church has seemed to some to be rep- 
resented by the mystic, intent on heaven; to others, 
by the disputatious philosopher, disturbing the ever- 
lasting silences with malicious chatter. To still 
others, the church has been represented by the eccle- 
siastic. It has been known to be profoundly interested 
in itself, in its interior organization, in its material 
progress, in the maintenance wherever possible of a 
monopoly of religion. Now as the United Order of 
Roman Catholics, now as the Brotherhood of Angli- 
can Churchmen, now as the Amalgamated Associa- 
tion of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, it has 
striven for its own supremacy, and insisted on the 
recogniton of the union, with little apparent regard 
for either the souls or the bodies of the people. That 
is, the church has given the impression that it does 
not care: that it does care for its own position and 
its own profits, but that it does not care for the 
people. And even now, plain as is the mischief made 
by our divisions, we resolutely refuse to adjust our 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 



73 



difference, each insisting upon the unconditional 
surrender of all the neighbors. 

This condemnation of the church as an institution 
interested chiefly in words and names and questions 
of ecclesiastical law, and caring little for the people, 
is to be set down beside the condemnation of the char- 
ities as full of the spirit of science and lacking in 
the spirit of affection. That is, we are to understand 
that whether these things are so or not, the fact that 
they are said and believed constitutes of itself an 
existing condition under which the best work cannot 
be done. The appeal to will must be made by love, 
and the love must be recognized. This is essential 
to any impression upon our neighbors. Our true pur- 
pose to increase the goodness and the happiness of 
the world has been obscured by our insistence upon 
certain matters which we have declared to be neces- 
sary to any genuine happiness or goodness. Are 
these matters so important as we think? When the 
Greeks were converted they told us that nobody can 
be very good or very happy unless he has got truth 
stated in accurate formulas; and we proceeded ac- 
cordingly to elaborate a creed. When the Latins were 
converted, they assured us that in order to be good 
and happy we must embody truth in institutions, and 
we set about perfecting the organization of the 
church. But somehow, neither the creed nor the 
church has made us so good or so happy as we hoped. 
We look back sometimes with great regret to the 
unsophisticated days of the l^ew Testament and of 



74 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the two or three centuries which followed when 
there was not a creed recited in any service in Chris- 
tendom, and if there was a church nobody can make 
out what kind of church it was. They had a creed 
and they had a church, but they put the emphasis 
of their interest neither upon the one nor upon the 
other. What they cared about was conduct. It might 
be well for us to notice that ancient emphasis. May 
it not be, that the world is no better than it is after 
the long residence of Christian people in it because 
the Christian Church has not tried hard enough to 
make it better ! 

The chief reason, however, for the slow march of 
our spiritual forces is to be found not in the church, 
but in the obstinate realities of human nature. 
Man grows better gradually, taking an incredible 
time about it. 

There is a tradition that the experiment was once 
tried of reforming the whole race, at all points, im- 
mediately. That was long ago, when the world was 
young. Already, in that early day, the human race 
had proved to be a disappointment. God came down 
to see the world which He had made, and behold it 
was very bad, for the wickedness of man was great 
in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts 
of his heart was only evil continually. So God sent 
a flood, and washed the foul earth absolutely clean. 
He did what many an ardent reformer has desired 
to do, destroyed the wicked and began over again. 
He chose a single pious family and saved them, and 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 75 



thus started the race anew along the straight and nar- 
row way. And what was the result ? Within a genera- 
tion, the world was bad as ever. The experiment of 
sudden transformation was thoroughly tried and 
failed. And God said that He would never try that 
experiment again. The bow was set in the cloud as 
a symbol and assurance of the Divine patience. 

Little by little, step by step, with almost imper- 
ceptible advance, slow as the descent of the glacier, 
slow as the precession of the equinoxes, man comes on 
up the long hill upon whose summit stands the temple 
of God. We must take that into account. It is a 
fact as fundamental as the law of gravitation. 

The betterment even of the individual proceeds 
with discouraging hesitation : to that we may testify 
not only from observation but from our own expe- 
rience with our own selves. St. Paul said that it 
was true of him that he did evil in spite of all his 
resolutions to do right; and we, who are no saints, 
know what he meant. The individual is very slow 
about it, but the deliberation of society can be ex- 
pressed only by a formula which multiplies the in- 
dividual by all the figures of the national census. 
The raising of the level of the life of a single house- 
hold is like the raising of the level of a well ; but the 
elevation of a city is like the elevation of the sea. 
Down we go with our quart cups of benevolence, even 
of religion, and empty them day after day into the 
great deep of social life, and look in vain to see the 
tide rise righer than it did the week before. It does 



76 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



rise higher, but the difference, even from year to 
year, eludes our instruments of precision. Even 
to St. Paul, bringing as it seems to us, a whole flood 
of beneficent impulse, the same sea beat upon the 
same rocks in the same place, after all his efforts. 
We know, looking back, that he accomplished much. 
But at the moment, he perceived no change. He 
did not, like Elijah, seek the black shadow of a juni- 
per tree, and there converse with despair. He was 
too good a Christian for that. But when he died, 
he felt that he had barely succeeded in reforming 
himself. 

The Master of our life had a like experience. The 
perfect man, hindered by no interior struggle, blocked 
by no personal faults, His hands and His heart absol- 
utely free from the bonds of sin — how did He suc- 
ceed in His social service ? There He lived for 
thirty years the human life of God on earth; there 
He made the supreme appeal of Divine love to human 
will, even to the death upon the cross; and the day 
after He died, any outside observer would have said 
that society was not perceptibly better for His ser- 
vice and His sacrifice. And yet that day, the trans- 
formation of the race had effectively begun. 

It is a slow world: that is the real reason why it 
is no better. Let us say that over to ourselves when 
we begin to be discouraged. The world is slow, but 
the spirit of God is sure. The appeal of love to will 
shall not forever go neglected. God waits for man, 
waits in His infinite paternal patience, waits in His 



WHY THE WORLD IS NO BETTER 



77 



incredible long-suffering. The divine march is ad- 
justed to the span of our feet. Where, we ask, is 
the promise of His coming ? And the answer is in our 
own hearts, and in the world about us and above us : 
in our own hearts, because we perceive there a per- 
sistent endeavor to be better ; in the world about us, 
because on every hand, in spite of sore defeat, the 
spiritual forces strive and make their way ; and in the 
world above us because the whole world is God's, and 
the good cause is God's cause. The fathers have in- 
deed fallen asleep, but their sons and their daughters 
carry on their work. We will not say with the dis- 
couraged people of old time, All things continue as 
they were from the beginning of the creation. We 
will say with the cheerful saints, All things work to- 
gether for good to them that love God. 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide concern- 
ing many peoples ; and they shall beat their swords into plough- 
shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift 
up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 
Isaiah 2:4. 

Isaiah was a preacher of peace. The chief bus- 
iness of his life, the distinctive mission of his minis- 
try, was to persuade the people to keep the peace. 
He was interested, however, not so much in the do- 
mestic as in the national aspects of the matter; 
being therein a man of his own time and a consistent 
member of the fraternity of prophets. 

For the prophets were all intent on the welfare of 
the nation. Not one of them had any immediate 
message to the individual. Their splendid sermons 
were preached not in parish churches, nor even in 
the temple courts, but in the great spaces of the 
market squares, in the public streets, in the presence 
of the people. They took their texts from the open 
pages of contemporary history, from the books of liv- 
ing kings. They spoke to men as citizens, and called 
them to the performance of their civic duties. Their 
instinctive and compelling and dominant interest 
was in the nation. 

By-and-by the word of the Lord came to an old 
man, who saw a vision as he ministered at the altar : 

78 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



79 



and immediately the man's heart, touched with fire 
from heaven, glowed with the anticipation of national 
felicity. The angel said, " You shall have a son : 
you, in your old age, shall have a son." And that 
was what the old man and his old wife had been pray- 
ing for, for years. But the first words of his great 
joy made no mention of that promise. After a while, 
he said, " And thou, child/' and the rest of it ; but 
the man's first thought was of the nation : " Blessed 
be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and 
redeemed His people." 

The word of the Lord came to a maiden, sitting 
with her needlework, looking out of her window over 
the quiet fields, lifting up her eyes to the hills. The 
angel said, " Behold, the Messiah is at hand, to take 
the life of man and live it, beginning at the beginning 
as a little child, and to your care shall He be en- 
trusted." And away went the girl's thoughts, far 
from herself, far from the village where she lived, out 
into the nation. " He hath showed strength with 
his arm : He hath scattered the proud in the imagina- 
tion of their heart. He hath put down the mighty 
from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and 
meek. He, remembering His mercy, hath holpen His 
servant Israel." 

Is it not singular and significant, this instant lift- 
ing up of the heart of this old man and of this 
maiden to these high matters ? They had been nur- 
tured, both of them, in the pages of the prophets. 
They had the national spirit. Their common occu- 



80 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



pations, their homes, their hopes, their hearts, were 
merged in the great current of the national life as 
the brook is blended with the sea. What a poor life 
it was, too! How little there was in the Judea of 
their day to be proud of. A subject people, taxed 
and oppressed and insulted by a foreign rule, with 
no independence left, and not even the sordid com- 
pensation of material prosperity: that was the na- 
tion. But what patriotic ardor, what expectation, 
what faith, what pride, breathe in the Magnificat 
and in the Benedictus! 

I take, therefore, Isaiah's subject. The Peace of 
Nations. Let us consider that ancient problem which 
has vexed the family of man since the day when Cain 
killed Abel at the gate of Eden : how to abolish war, 
how to keep the people in accord, how to establish 
unity and concord in the wide household of God. 

Let me first meet a difficulty which may arise in 
the minds of some of you as to the fitness of such a 
theme to the ordinary congregation. For most of us 
are quiet people, occupied with the engagements of 
private life, and concerned rather remotely with the 
negotiations of international politics. Why, then, 
consider the matter in this presence ? To legislators, 
to diplomats, to editors of newspapers, to politicians, 
a sermon, if there were opportunity, on the Peace of 
Nations ; but we private persons, we who are occu- 
pied sufficiently in minding our own individual busi- 
ness, — what have we to do with it? 

We have this to do with it, that we are all con- 



THE PEACE OP NATIONS 



81 



tributors to public opinion. Every reformation, 
every substantial change, rests ultimately on public 
opinion. It depends upon the people. Its founda- 
tions are deep in social life; else it will topple over. 
Ultimately, the will of the general people prevails. 
The thing which comes to be considered right is done. 

There is no boundary to the domain of public opin- 
ion. And public opinion is at the height of its 
power in our Anglo-Saxon nations, where law is the 
record of the decisions of the people. Under such a 
government, we are all legislators : we have all a part 
in determining the policy of the state. And, in the 
nature of things, we and our immediate neighbors, 
the educated classes, the people who think and speak, 
have a large part in that determination. Our mind 
makes a difference in the general mind. Sooner or 
later, the conclusions to which we come enter into 
the places of the nation. 

I desire, accordingly, to express what I believe to be 
a sound, Christian opinion respecting the Peace of 
Nations: partly for the satisfaction of speaking the 
truth, and partly in the conviction that every such 
utterance, however humble, assists that great cause 
which we have at heart. 

Let us be sure, then, to begin with, that our minds 
are free from the delusion of military glory. 

War approves itself to some people because of its 
appeal to the senses. The sight of the shining colors 
of uniforms, of lines of men marching with the even 
steadiness of a vast machine, with flags flying, the 



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spectacle of forts and of battleships, demands an 
invincible attention, which is in part instinctive, and 
in part an inheritance of centuries of fighting. The 
music of the military band thrills the souls of men, 
beyond all other sounds. The drum, especially, has 
been used for immemorial ages, not only in war but 
in religion, on account of its singular effect upon 
the mind. It beats, and the pulses of the dullest man 
beat with it. 

War appeals also to our instinctive interest in con- 
tention. The sight of a struggle fascinates us. It is 
an instructive fact that no function of the college 
approaches even remotely the attraction of a game of 
football. There is probably no occasion which the 
academic authorities could devise which could suc- 
cessfully compute with this spectacle. The fact is 
instructive because the foot-ball field interprets the 
colosseum, and the two together interpret the field 
of battle. Strife is immeasureably interesting. The 
honest truth is that human beings like it beyond 
words. Some of them like to fight ; most of them like 
to see other people fight. It is the supreme human 
excitement. 

But all this gilds and paints the face of death. 
War means violent death. That is the intention of 
its machinery of men and of steel. It is constructed 
and operated for the purpose of killing men. It is 
devised for murder. 

Here is a child born amidst the joy and gratitude 
of a household, tenderly nurtured, dowered with 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



83 



daily affection and self-sacrifice, trained that he may 
be a good man, taught that he may be a competent 
and useful man, beloved by father and mother and 
brother and sisters, the centre of hope and pride and 
prayer and pleasure. He grows up, and is married 
and has children, and makes a happy home for him- 
self, and begins to take his good share in the world's 
work. Then war calls him ; sometimes, it is true, in 
a language which he can understand and to which his 
soul responds, but often in the speech of mere author- 
ity : his superiors bid him to fight, he knows not why. 
The quarrel is their own, not his : often for their own 
selfish welfare, for no good to him or to his neighbors, 
for no worthy purpose. Anyhow, he goes; and his 
parents, his kinsfolk, his wife and little children 
pray for him. And the next day, he is shot dead. 
Out he goes, at beat of drum, into the stricken field, 
and is shot dead. Somebody may say that the army 
is largely made up of common soldiers, recruited 
from the streets. What difference does it make how 
many hundreds fall in the passes of Manchuria or in 
the straits of the Japan Sea ? It makes a world of 
difference to them and to their families. Every one 
of these names, so grotesque to our eyes, is some- 
where pronounced with tenderness. For every hum- 
blest man thus put to death some heart breaks to-day. 

Yes, I remember the heroic lines which are carved 
on the monuments of martys. The playing-grounds 
at Harvard University are called the Soldiers' Field. 
An inscription at the gate records the names of the 



84 



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men in whose memory the field was given, and adds 
the lines which say, 

" Tis man's perdition to be safe 
When for the truth he ought to die." 

There are causes, I admit, for which men ought 
willingly to die; that is, they ought to die if there 
is no other way by which to win the cause. But 
the names at the gate of the Soldiers' Field were those 
of the flower of the youth of that community. Think 
what a precious store of strength and wisdom and 
devotion and opportunity died with them. Was it a 
good use to make of those young men — to shoot them 
dead in battle ? 

Let us rid ourselves of the glamour of war, and 
put far from us the delusion of military glory. The 
red in the men's coats is the color of blood, and the 
martial music drowns the groans of the dying. Any 
soldier who has seen service will say that. Wash- 
ington said, indeed, after his first battle. " I heard 
the bullets whistle, and there is something charming 
in the sound." But George the Second, to whom 
the sentence was repeated, remarked that the young 
man " would not say so if he had been used to hear 
many." It was a brave officer who called war hell. 
He had been in it, and knew what he was talking 
about, and he did not exaggerate. 

Let us denounce war as a waste of treasure. I am 
not thinking of small economies, nor balancing the 
gains of shop-keepers against the good estate of an 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



85 



oppressed people. I am thinking of the intimate re- 
lation between money and progress. Think what 
money will buy for the betterment of men. Put the 
price of a battleship into education, into philan- 
thropy, into religion, and consider what blessings it 
will bring. Out it goes, the equivalent of colleges 
and hospitals and churches, on an errand of delib- 
erate destruction. You must have it, if you have 
war ; but what a perversion of human energy it is ! 

Let us denounce war as a waste of men. I am not 
thinking now of the tragedies of the field of battle, 
whereby sturdy citizens are changed into dead bodies 
fit only to be buried, but of the vast amount of 
strength and time which in many countries the cause 
of war takes from the occupations of peace. A man 
is rendering his highest service to the state when he 
is engaged in a useful business, contributing to the 
happiness of human life. The army takes him away, 
deprives the state of his industrial service and makes 
his maintenance a charge upon his neighbors. 

Let us denounce war as the great obstacle to prog- 
ress. The business of man is to build up: but war 
breaks down. The soldiers of Christian Europe 
standing with torch and axe in the ancient palaces of 
China, breaking what they could not steal, represent 
the immemorial and characteristic and inevitable at- 
titude of war. The artist works at his picture or his 
statue, the author at his book, the merchant at his 
trade, the architect at his house, the engineer at his 
dock, his railway or his bridge, the priest prays at 



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his altar, and then the soldier comes and hurls down 
all this beauty and grace and learning and industry 
and devotion into a common heap of hideous rubbish. 

Let us denounce war as a contradiction to the 
spirit of religion. It is true that the Old Testament 
is a book of the wars of the Lord. We are there 
told that the Lord is a man of war: that he slew 
mighty kings, " for his mercy endureth forever " : 
and that he approves of the soldier who dashes out the 
brains of little children against the stone doorsteps 
of their ruined houses. But regarding all this, there 
are two things to be said. 

One is that the Bible is a record of human expe- 
rience. There is war in it, because there is war in 
the heart and in the history of man. 

The other thing to be said is this, that the Bible is 
an account of a progressive revelation. Men, as they 
go on, learn about God more and more. They make 
confident assertions concerning His will; they put 
words into His mouth, saying, " Thus saith the 
Lord " : they are very sure that God is of the same 
spirit as that which animates them at the moment. 
In an age of war, God is naturally a man of war to 
them. " Blessed," they cry, " be the Lord my 
strength, who teacheth my hands to war and my 
fingers to fight." But that is simply human error. 
Men honestly believed that God wished them to ex- 
terminate the inhabitants of Canaan. They were to 
kill everybody in sight. But when an American 
general issued a like order in the Philippine Islands, 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



87 



the religious people of the whole nation protested in 
horror. The fact of a scriptural precedent amounted 
to nothing. It was no precedent, any more than the 
customs of our savage ancestors are a pattern for us 
their children. 

Indeed, even in the Old Testament, there are 
glimpses of the gospel of peace. Gradually, men 
came to see in a dim way that God is on the side of 
peace. They came to anticipate a glad time when 
the sword and the spear should give place to the 
ploughshare and the pruning-hook. They came to 
hope for the blessed reign of Him whose proudest 
title should be that of Prince of Peace. And then 
the Bethlehem angels sang, and He came who brought 
the divine benediction, " Peace I leave with you : 
my peace I give unto you." 

It is, indeed, to be said in defence of war that it 
maintains the spirit of a nation. It gives the whole 
people a common interest, a common purpose and a 
common pride. They realize their citizenship as they 
had not realized it before. They know what the flag 
means. The Spanish War, for example, contributed 
to the unifying of the United States, and broke down 
the barriers which were in process of erection between 
the east and the west, and between the north and 
the south. 

It is to be said also in defence of war that it main- 
tains the manhood of a country. It accustoms men to 
hardship. It evolves the virtues of courage and self- 
sacrifice. It does not do any of these things so sub- 



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THE YEAR OF GRACE 



stantially as the callings of a life of peace. It does 
not build up such sturdy manhood as the hard work 
of a farm; nor does it take men into more imme- 
diate peril of death than some of the common tasks of 
the policeman or of the fireman or even of the phys- 
ician. But soldiering makes men, too: let us admit 
that. 

These considerations restrain us from taking a 
position of non-resistance. They forbid us to declaim 
against war without discrimination. But a thousand 
other considerations urge upon us the exaltation of 
law in the place of war. Men must be restrained 
from doing evil ; but they are effectually restrained by 
the orderly process of law. There was a time when 
private men lived under war rather than under law. 
There was a time when all disputes between neighbors 
were subject to the decision of the fist and of the club. 
In those days, the house of every great man was a bat- 
tlemented castle, tenanted by armed retainers, built 
to stand a seige. Every person of importance com- 
manded a standing army of his own. It was only 
when the strong man armed kept his house that his 
goods were in peace. To-day, that situation sur- 
vives only in savage lands, and in the savage regions 
of great cities. What ended that reign of war ? The 
substitution of a reign of law. 

That is what we desire in the affairs of nations. 
We would make violence as remote from the discus- 
sions of civilized communities as it is from the differ- 
ences of Christian gentlemen. We would extend the 



THE PEACE OF NATIONS 



89 



realm of law till it shall cover the earth as the waters 
cover the sea. By the introduction of an arbitration 
clause into all international treaties, by the establish- 
ment of the Hague Tribunal as a supreme court of in- 
ternational appeal, by the gradual construction of a 
body of international law whose decrees shall run 
over all seas and lands, we would make right and 
justice instead of force of arms the determining facts 
in all international disputes. 

High on the loftiest summit of the Andes, looking 
down on one side over Chili and on the other over 
Argentina, stands the supreme monument of peace. 
The two nations, on the very eve of war, arbitrated 
their differences and settled them satisfactorily 
without resort to guns. They took the money which 
they would have spent for battleships and put it into 
the improvement of the public roads. And on the 
top of the mountains they erected as the memorial of 
this victory of reason over force a statue of the 
Prince of Peace, a colossal figure of the Lord Christ, 
holding the cross. There stands the statue of the 
Christ of the Andes dominating the prosperous lands : 
a symbol of the final triumph of the peace of God. 



THE FIGUEES OF THE TRUE 



" The holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the 
true." Heb. 9:24. 

The word " symbol " does not occur in the Bible, 
but the phrase " the figures of the true " means the 
same thing. A symbol is taken from the physical 
world to express a spiritual reality. For example, 
in the Eighteenth Psalm there is a description of a 
storm, with thunder and lightning, the sky black 
above and the earth trembling and quaking beneath, 
and the hail blown in men's faces The interest of 
the writer is in the presence of God in the storm. 
God, he says, " rode upon the cherubim and did fly : 
He came flying upon the wings of the wind. He 
made darkness His secret place: His pavilion round 
about Him with dark water, and thick clouds to 
cover Him. He sent out His arrows and scattered 
His enemies: He cast forth lightnings and destroyed 
them." This is plainly the language of symbol. 
These statements are not to be taken as the observ- 
ations of a man of science. They are the figures 
of the true. What the psalmist says is that God 
sat upon the shoulders of a cherub, and was sup- 
ported by the wind's wings, and shot His foes with 
arrows. What the psalmist means is that God was 
in the storm. 

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THE FIGURES OF THE TRUE 



91 



This manner of expression is partly a matter of 
poverty and partly a matter of poetry. 

It is due in part to the poverty of language, in 
consequence of which we are compelled to use phys- 
ical words for spiritual things. A devout man in a 
moment of unusual religious exaltation is carried 
out of himself, as we say, into a new and near con- 
sciousness of the Divine presence. In speaking of 
his experience he may express himself in one or 
other of two ways. He may confess his total inability 
to put the matter into speech; saying with St. Paul 
that he was caught up into paradise, and heard un- 
speakable words. Or else he may use the inadequate 
language of common life, saying with Isaiah, " I 
saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted 
up."- This is not contradicted by the saying, " ~No 
man hath seen God at any time " ; because the verb 
to see is used in the one place symbolically, in the 
other place literally. " Then went up Moses, and 
Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders 
of Israel : and they saw the God of Israel ; and there 
was under His feet as it were a paved work of a 
sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in 
His clearness — they saw God, and did eat and 
drink." But the paved work of the sapphire was 
only a figure of the true. It was by an experience in 
which sight had no place that they saw God. 

This expression of truth by figure is also due in 
part to the spirit of poetry. The thing to say is so 
great, the consciousness of the Divine is so close, that 



92 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the plain words of common prose will not suffice. 
There is a mighty battle in the valley of Ajalon, a 
decisive battle, and Joshua wins the victory. The 
conditions had been difficult, the issue had been un- 
certain, the balance had trembled between hope and 
fear; but Israel wins. And so tremendous is the 
triumph that one day seems altogether too short for 
the magnitude of the accomplishment. They re- 
corded the event in song as well as in chronicle; to 
plain history they added poetry. And in the song 
they said, " The sun and moon stood still. Joshua 
raised his hand to heaven and stayed them in their 
places and lengthened the day to fit the deed/' Thus 
it was written in the Book of Heroes. It is like the 
saying of the Song of Deborah, " The stars in their 
courses fought against Sisera." It is like the account 
of the great storm. He rode upon the cherubim and 
did fly, He came flying upon the wings of the wind. 
All of these assertions are in the manner of poetry. 
They are absurd in prose. 

In order to read the Bible intelligently this habit 
of expression must be taken into account. We must 
understand that the writers of this book do not al- 
ways mean only what they say. Sometimes because 
they are poets, sometimes because they are dealing 
with great matters which are too high for accurate 
definition, they use the figures of the true. They 
speak in symbol. What they say must be not lit- 
erally but spiritually discerned. When every page 
of the Bible is read as plain prose, and every sentence 



THE FIGURES OF THE TRUE 



93 



is taken to set forth a statute or a dogma, the result 
is manifold error. On the other hand a recognition 
of the figures of the true illuminates the book, and 
brings it close to human life. We are relieved from 
many needless difficulties, and we are assisted to 
perceive that a good deal of the difference between 
the dealings of God with men of old time and with 
us is in the manner of description. God is just as 
near to us as He was to them, only we give a different 
account of our experience. 

One narrative which is evidently in the language 
of symbol is our Lord's account of His temptation. 
Taken as a paragraph of statistical history, this is a 
record of an infernal encounter. In the solitude of 
the desert, Jesus met the devil face to face. There 
the Prince of Evil personally beset Him, first with 
one solicitation, then with another. " If thou be 
the Son of God," he says, " turn these stones into 
bread." When that temptation fails he transports 
Jesus to a pinnacle of the temple; and after that, 
still in vain, to the top of an exceeding high moun- 
tain. 

All this is, indeed, possible. Anything is possible. 
But it is out of accord with the customary natural- 
ness and simplicity of the life of Christ. .With all 
His divinity, He is much more normal than many 
of His servants the saints, whose conflict with demons 
in the wilderness suggests a mind unbalanced. Our 
Lord is always eminently sane and sensible. It is 
characteristic of Him that He lives our life, and 



94 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



that He is distinguished from us not so much by un- 
usual experiences as by meeting our common diffi- 
culties in an unusual way. 

Moreover, a superficial reading of the temptation 
is out of accord with the essential conditions of 
temptation. It is essential to effective temptation 
that it be disguished under the garb of goodness. 
The better we are the less are we exposed to 
the solicitation of recognized evil. If the devil 
would have dealings with us, he must come as an 
angel of light. If he were to appear as he is repre- 
sented in the narrative of our Lord's temptation, the 
plain devil, even we would not be seriously tempted. 
The record read literally is psychologically impossi- 
ble. If it is true that He was tempted in all things 
like as we are, the choice between two courses of 
action was not offered to Him by the word of the 
devil but by those contrasting voices which we all 
hear in the silence of our own souls. The narrative 
is in the language of symbol. These dramatic in- 
cidents, of the stones, of the temple roof, of the 
steep mountain, are the figures of the true. An in- 
terpretive parallel is our Lord's saying, " I beheld 
Satan as lightning falls from heaven." Thus, He 
beheld Satan in the desert, with the eyes of His soul. 
Then the temptation becomes a vital fact to us. 
We too must meet the devil as he did, we must make 
our choice between that which is plausibly good and 
that which is positively good; we can do it, we 



THE FIGURES OF THE TRUE 



95 



can do it victoriously, by His grace, following His 
example. 

Another difficult saying, or series of sayings, is 
that in which our Lord speaks of His second coming. 
" The sun," he says, " shall be darkened, and the 
moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall 
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be 
shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son 
of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of 
the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man 
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and 
great glory. And he shall send His angels with a 
great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather to- 
gether His elect from the four winds, from one end 
of heaven to the other." St. Paul, in his epistle to 
the Thessalonians, uses the same imagery. " The 
Lord Himself," he says, " shall descend from heaven 
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and 
with the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall 
rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall 
be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet 
the Lord in the air." 

When we attempt to visualize these prophecies, 
we find that we cannot even imagine them fulfilled. 
The descent of the Lord out of the sky with a great 
shout, and the ascent of ourselves and our neighbors 
to meet Him in the air, cannot well be harmonized 
with our conception of Him or with our understand- 
ing of ourselves. Some, indeed, have found these de- 
tails credible, and have held themselves in instant 



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THE YEAR OF GRACE 



readiness to be taken up into the clouds, but we can 
hardly imagine ourselves in their expectant com- 
pany. Nothing, indeed, can be farther from our 
desires. 

A clue to the meaning of these mysterious pas- 
sages is in the speech of St. Peter on the Day of 
Pentecost. A crowd has gathered in consequence 
of the extraordinary enthusiasm and jubilation of 
the apostles, and men are saying, " What meaneth 
this ? " St. Peter in reply quotes from the prophet 
Joel. This, he says, is a fulfillment of the prophecy 
of Joel, when he said, " I will show wonders in heaven 
above and signs in the earth beneath ; blood and fire 
and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into 
darkness and the moon into blood." As a matter of 
fact, not one of these extraordinary things was hap- 
pening. The sun was shining in perfect serenity 
by day and the moon by night. The Jerusalem 
streets showed not the slightest trace of blood or fire 
or vapor of smoke. A little company of strangers 
from Galilee, in some upper room, had come into a 
singular consciousness of the presence of God, and 
had been made aware in a very direct way of a 
divine mission. This was their description of it. 

Then we perceive not only that they were thus en- 
deavoring to describe the indescribable by the use of 
figures of the true, but that these figures, strange as 
they seem to us, were customary forms of speech. 
They who heard them, understood, They did not 
look to see the skies fall j they perceived that the 



THE FIGURES OF THE TRUE 



97 



apostles were speaking of the coming of Messiah, 
and of the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and 
of the social changes which these events implied. 
The words were taken from the language of astron- 
omy, but their significance was altogether spiritual. 
When our Lord and St. Peter and St. Paul spoke 
of the falling of the sun and moon it was as when 
it was said of old time. The stars in their courses 
fought against Sisera. And the same may be said 
of the last triumph, and the great shout, and the ap- 
pearance of the Son of Man in the sky and the ris- 
ing of the faithful to the clouds. All this is to be 
interpreted spiritually. The reality is a great change, 
the end of an era and the beginning of another, first 
the conquest of Christianity over the Roman Empire, 
finally the triumph of Christ over all the evil of the 
world. Looking out into the future, and affirming 
these events, the only words available were those of 
poetry and symbol, the figures of the true. 

We may, perhaps, interpret in this way the ac- 
counts of such events as the transfiguration of our 
Lord, and the appearance of the tongues of fire at 
Pentecost. The chief reason for desiring any other 
interpretation than that which lies upon the surface 
of these narratives is that as they stand they are out 
of relation with our life. If the apostles saw Jesus 
in a blaze of glory, even His garments shining like 
the brightness of the sun, they had an experience 
which is wholly impossible for us. And if the Spirit 
was manifested to them under the form of fire and 



98 



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the sound of the blowing of the wind, then the Spirit 
dealt with them as He does not deal with us. This, 
indeed, is likely enough. After all is said, it may 
be that the best explanation is to take the records 
literally, just as they stand. But they may be taken 
spiritually. That is, we may think, if we will, that 
the apostles came out of these times and places of 
spiritual privilege and exaltation and immediate con- 
sciousness of the divine presence, and described what 
they had experienced in the language of the senses 
because they had no other words. 

On the mountain, as the Lord prayed, He was 
transfigured. So intimate was His prayer, so close 
was He to His heavenly Father to whom He spoke, 
that the very light of the celestial country shone upon 
Him. The eyes of the apostles were heavy with sleep ; 
all of their impressions were confused ; watching and 
beholding Him in prayer and having a dim, perplexed 
perception of light and cloud and voices and heavenly 
visitants, with only this fact clear, that He who thus 
prayed spoke with God divinely, they brought back 
their report in symbol. The shining garments were 
the figures of the true. 

And in the upper room, they entered again into 
an indescribable experience. Afterwards, when men 
said, " What happened ? " all that they could say in 
reply was that it was as if the room was filled with 
the sound of a rushing, mighty wind, and as if the 
appearance of fire rested on their heads. It was 
as when Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu 



THE FIGURES OP THE TRUE 



99 



saw the God of Israel standing on the paved work of 
a sapphire. Thus the apostles in the upper room saw 
God. Suddenly and singularly they were in the 
Divine presence, and were filled with the Holy Spirit. 
For this blessed experience the best expression they 
could find was in terms of wind and fire ; as at the 
baptism of our Lord the best symbol of the manifest 
benediction of God was the likeness of the form of 
a dove: it seemed as if the Spirit descended like a 
dove; that is as near as our human speech could 
come to the event. Thus President Finney, the 
prophet of a great spiritual awakening, in the first 
half of the last century, described his own conver- 
sion : " The Holy Spirit descended upon me in a 
manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. 
I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity 
going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to 
come in waves of liquid love ; for I cannot describe 
it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath 
of God. I can recollect that it seemed to fan me, like 
immense wings/' This description interprets the 
record of the Day of Pentecost, and brings it within 
the range of human life. We ourselves, in moments 
of exaltation, stand in the upper room ; and the Holy 
Spirit deals with us directly and blessedly as He dealt 
with the apostles, and we are filled with the Divine 
benediction, beyond all power of utterance. Then, as 
we read the Bible, the past and the present meet, 
and we realize that God is in our life to-day even as 
He was of old. We may not describe our experience 



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as the saints did, even to ourselves, but even the 
saints could not adequately describe it. They had 
to use the figures of the true. 

This is plainly the case with the New Testament 
revelations of the life to come. The gates of pearl 
and streets of gold, the crowns and harps, are but the 
symbols of a celestial world which is out of the range 
not only of our experience but of our imagination. 
That realm of the spirit may touch this earth as the 
air in which the dragon fly disports his shining wings 
touches the water in which as a grub he had his 
previous existence. All that we know is that eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
into the heart of man the things which God hath 
prepared for them that love Him. They pass all 
understanding: our best anticipations, our brightest 
visions, are but the figures of the true. 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



And he asked him, What is thy name ? And he answered, say- 
ing, My name is Legion. St. Mark 5 : 9. 

The words bring with them the whole dramatic 
story with which they are connected. It happened 
on the pagan side of the Sea of Galilee. The west 
shore of that lake was inhabited by Jews; the east 
shore by Greeks, under the rule of the Romans. On 
the west side were synagogues ; on the east side, 
temples and theatres. The exact locality is in some 
doubt, for the evangelists give it different names. St. 
Matthew calls it the country of the Gergesenes; St. 
Mark and St. Luke, the country of the Gadarenes. 
The two places are miles apart. The Gadarenes lived 
far away from Capernaum, the common scene of our 
Lord's ministry; the Gergesenes lived near at hand, 
just across the lake. 

There is room for doubt, also, as to the time when 
this occurred. St. Matthew says that it took place 
early in our Lord's ministry, before He had selected 
the twelve apostles; St. Mark and St. Luke put it 
later, after the call of the apostles. 

A third curious difference appears in the story 
itself. How many men were possessed with a thou- 
sand devils? Were they all in one man? was the 
whole diabolic legion quartered in one soul ? or were 

101 



102 



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the forces divided ? were there two men ? St, Matthew 
says two ; St. Mark and St. Luke say one. 

The variations are of no importance in themselves. 
It matters little whether the place was the country of 
the Gergesenes or of the Gadarenes ; whether the time 
was early or late in the ministry of our Lord: or 
whether the devils afflicted two or one. It is pretty 
plain, however, that St. Matthew is following one 
tradition, and St. Mark and St. Luke another. It is 
plain, also, that the three cannot all be right. We 
must proceed here, as we are accustomed to do in 
ordinary history, weighing the probabilities, and 
making up our own minds. That is, we have the 
privilege of perfect intellectual freedom. The di- 
vergences of statement deliver us at once from all 
bonds of infallibility. 

This right of judgment is not to be confined within 
the region of evident difference. It extends to every 
part of the narrative. The moment we say that St. 
Luke may have been mistaken in putting this miracle 
after the call of the apostles; and that St. Mark may 
have been mistaken in locating it in the neighborhood 
of Gadara: and that St. Matthew may have been 
mistaken in affirming that there were two demoniacs :. 
that moment we give permission to anyone who will 
to say that they may all three have been mistaken in 
declaring that the thousand devils went out of the 
man into the swine. 

That, you will observe, is the hard part of the 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



103 



story. Every other detail is of such a nature as to 
commend it to our ordinary intelligence. 

The Master is rowed across the lake to a land where 
there are no Pharisees; or where, at least, there are 
no crowds of thronging people. He had no personal 
dislike of crowds as some have ; when He saw a multi- 
tude He was filled not with repulsion but with com- 
passion. But He perceived that the most effective 
spiritual work is not done at wholesale. Whoever be- 
comes a member of a crowd, especially of an excited 
crowd, merges his own personality in the multitude. 
He is not quite himself. His decisions are not his 
own decisions. Jesus desired to deal with men on 
the basis of absolute honesty. He wanted to look 
men in the face, and to take them by the hand. His 
business was with the normal man. So He disliked 
crowds, and got away from them whenever He could. 

This takes Him now across the lake, and there as 
soon as He steps out of the boat He finds Himself 
confronted by a wild man. " Immediately, there met 
him out of the tombs a man who had an unclean 
spirit." The adjective is synonymous with evil. 
There is no reference to any particular kind of sin, 
or, indeed, to any sin. We would say the man was 
mad, a crazy man. He " had his dwelling among 
the tombs," among the ghastly caves, cut into the 
sharp sides of the hill, and full of dead men's bones. 
" And no man could bind him, no, not with chains : 
because that he had been often bound with fetters 
and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder 



104 



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by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither 
could any man tame him." Plainly, they had tried 
it, after the well-meant but totally ignorant manner 
of their time, ministering to a mind diseased by a 
treatment of chains and fetters. Naturally, the man 
grew worse instead of better. " Always, night and 
day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, 
crying, and cutting himself with sharp stones." 
And he was " exceeding fierce, so that no man might 
pass that way." Everybody took the long road 
around, especially at night. This, you perceive was 
at a very great distance from our hospitals for the 
insane. Between this poor man, crying in the deso- 
late mountains, and the patients of these beneficent 
institutions, what a significant and blessed differ- 
ence ! 

So the man came running, a hideous and pitiful 
figure ; no doubt, scaring the disciples, as they stood 
between the Master and the boat. And when he 
came where Jesus was., he fell down at His feet, wor- 
shipping and defying Him. Yes, at the same time, 
imploring and reviling Him. The knees of the man, 
the hands of the man, the heart of the man, are as 
if they belonged to a Christian in a church ; but his 
words are the voice of a ruffian on the corner of a 
dirty street. " What have I to do with thee, Jesus, 
thou Son of God? I adjure thee by God that thou 
torment me not." And the Lord asked him, " What 
is thy name ? " That was an unusual question. On 
no other occasion did our Lord ask it. Was it to quiet 



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105 



the man, speaking thus naturally and simply, as to an 
ordinary passenger met upon the road — What is your 
name ? Or was it to solve the enigma of the praying 
hands and the swearing lips ? Which of these is your- 
self ? in which of these contradicting communications 
am I to discover you ? To this the man replied, 
" My name is Legion : for we are many ; " as if he 
had said, " I am a thousand devils." 

Up to this point there is nothing in the story which 
exceeds the experience of men who are accustomed 
to deal with diseases of the mind: — Not even the 
fact of demoniacal possession, here asserted by the 
man and accepted by the Master. The phrases differ, 
but the fact remains. The reality of a malign pos- 
session, of the intrusion of another will, is affirmed by 
physicians. The medical name for it is dual per- 
sonality, or triple or multiple personality. Nobody 
pretends to understand it, though the processes of 
hypnotism are making the study of it a little easier. 
But there it is. The man at the feet of J esus declared 
that he had a thousand devils; his soul was the 
fortress of a regiment of devils. 

Even when the Lord commanded the devils to 
come out, and they came out, there was no contradic- 
tion of medical experience. The like of it has hap- 
pened many times. 

But here is the difficulty. The devils besought 
Him much that He would not send them out of the 
country. They seem to have had a preference for 
that neighborhood. " Now there was nigh unto the 



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mountain a great herd of swine feeding, and all the 
devils besought Him " in a clamoring chorus, " say- 
ing, send us into the swine, that we may enter into 
them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And 
the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the 
swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep 
place into the sea, (they were about two thousand) ; 
and perished in the waters." I suppose that I am not 
exceeding the opinion of anybody here present when 
I say that that is uncommonly hard to believe. 

It is hard to believe not only because it exceeds 
the limits of our observation but because it offends 
our sense of mercy. That our Lord, at the solicita- 
tion of a thousand devils, should destroy two thousand 
animals is out of accord with our ideals of humane 
conduct. It is not likely that this entered for a 
moment into the minds of the evangelists. They 
were no doubt of St. Paul's opinion, who in quoting 
the text, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth 
out the corn," said that that must have some other 
meaning than appears on the surface, because God 
does not care for oxen. We have outgrown these New 
Testament men in this matter. We believe that God 
does care for oxen, and even for swine. 

The miracle offends not only our sense of mercy 
but our conception of the rights of property. It is in- 
deed true, as I shall say again presently, that prop- 
erty is always to be subordinated to humanity. It 
does not appear, however, in the narrative that this 
destruction of property was necessary in order to 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



107 



cure the man. It was for the convenience of the thou- 
sand devils. That our Lord, for such a reason, should 
impoverish a number of unoffending Greeks by driv- 
ing their cattle into the sea, is very difficult for us to 
believe. 

Under these circumstances we may follow the di- 
vine guidance of our reason in either of two direc- 
tions. On the one side, we may frankly avail our- 
selves of that perfect freedom of judgment which is 
opened to us by the differing reports of the three 
narrators. The disciples who stood that day beside 
our Lord saw the man healed and saw the swine 
leap into the sea. That is plain, substantial fact. 
Then the story was told one to another, on and on, 
till both place and date became obscured, and it was 
uncertain whether there were two madmen or one. 
Did the swine fall into this fatal panic because they 
were impelled by a thousand devils ? or because they 
were scared by the wild cries of the man ? May it 
not be that the devils, driven out of the man, entered 
not into the swine but into the story? Down went 
the swine, and, to the mind of that time, hospitable 
to the marvelous, down went the thousand devils 
with them. That was both an easy and an interesting 
explanation. But the mind of our time seeks some 
other cause, and instinctively conjectures that this 
detail belongs not so much to the east side of the sea 
as to the east side of the human mind. 

Or else we may say, that the whole matter belongs 
to an undiscovered country, in which there is neither 



108 



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east nor west, that we do not know enough about it to 
pass judgment upon it, dwelling as we do in a world 
which is very imperfectly understood; and the 
simplest thing to do is just to take it in all good faith, 
and leave it. 

These two roads seem to lead in exactly opposite 
directions, but neither of them will take the enquirer 
very far from the central sanctuary of Christian 
truth. 

Meanwhile, beyond all doubt and difficulty, and 
quite independent of all such debate, the story of the 
thousand devils contains certain clear and helpful 
meanings. 

Our Lord is dealing here with two very different 
kinds of people: first with the man who is possessed 
by a thousand devils, and then with the men who are 
possessors of two thousand swine. One is the type 
of spiritual failure, the others are the type of ma- 
terial success. Let us observe them in the presence 
of the Master of our life. 

The man with the thousand devils had miserably 
failed. He had lost authority over his own conduct. 
He had ceased to have control. He felt that his will 
was dominated by other malevolent wills. He had his 
dwelling in the mountains, but his soul dwelt in the 
bottom of the black abyss of despair, where one cries, 
" I can do no different. I have lost hold of myself : 
I have no power to help myself." The next thing 
after that is the loss of the soul, in utter vice ; or the 
loss of the mind. 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



109 



It is possible that he had fallen into this condition 
through misfortunes which had come upon him by 
the exactions and cruelties of Roman soldiers. There 
was a legion quartered in his neighborhood. They 
seemed to pursue him even in his madness. He saw 
no difference between soldiers and devils : they looked 
alike to him. So they did, in those hard days, to 
many another poor peasant whom they robbed and 
abused without redress. The man's name, if we mny 
accept this supposition, revealed not only his in- 
sanity, and the nature of it, but the reason for it. 
He had been driven out of his senses by the Eoman 
legion. 

At the same time, there were other men, who had 
likewise suffered the loss of all things, but who were 
going on with steadfast courage. They were not 
resorting to the mountains, nor taking up their resi- 
dence in the tombs, nor crying, nor cutting them- 
selves with stones. They were keeping both their 
mind and their soul. The contrast between him and 
them was in the effects of disaster. Disaster had 
conquered him, but it had not conquered them. They 
had lost the whole world, but had preserved them- 
selves. In one way or another, whether by reason of 
temperament or by reason of religion, — in either 
case, by the grace of God, — they had kept the mas- 
tery. That, however, is another matter. What we 
have to observe here is a restriction of the mastery. 
Here is a man totally disheartened, in the hands of 



110 



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despair, a spiritual failure; and the Lord leads him 
out into the blessed light. How did He do it? 

The first thing that the Lord did was to help the 
man. See how quietly He set about it. The man 
came frantic, wild with excitement. The Lord spoke 
in a natural, ordinary voice, as if He were address- 
ing any normal stranger, saying, " What is your 
name ? " the commonplace question had an immedi- 
ate psychological effect. The man pulled himself 
together, as we say, and answered. 

The man looked at the Master, and beheld a 
friend. And in that moment he began to get his 
courage back. He came to himself. He said, " With 
the aid of my friend, I can be a man again." And 
the instant that good thought entered the man's 
mind, the thousand devils, in consternation and dis- 
gust, got out. For the devil is very particular as to 
the company he keeps. He will not stay a minute 
in the same room with a good thought. The man 
perceived the strong friendship of Jesus, and was 
free. 

That victorious expulsion is occuring every day in 
the lives of disheartened people. In the midst of 
disappointment and disorder, when life goes hard and 
wrong, and a man's soul cries in despair, among the 
tombs, and the man says, " I am no good, and worse 
than that ! I have lost my chance, and my mind and 
my soul ; " suddenly between the barren mountains 
and the barren sea stands Christ, — where He was 
standing all the time, but the man did not see Him, 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



111 



— and the man comes running, half in joy and half 
in doubt, and falls at His feet. And he finds that 
the Eternal is his friend. He stands up, saying 
the great words of faith, " The Lord is on my side, 
I will not fear what man can do unto me " ; and the 
great words of comfort, " In the world ye shall have 
tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world " ; and the great words of assurance, 
u Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind 
is stayed on Thee." 

It is hard to put this experience into words, and 
even when it is put into the best words, it still eludes 
our understanding. But it happens.. The unseen 
ministers to man. The disheartened man kneels 
down, and prays to God as his friend, and a thou- 
sand devils flee away, and a star shines in his soul. 

The next thing that the Lord did was to send the 
man to help his neighbors. The saved man desired, 
naturally enough, to continue in the company of 
Jesus, but this was not to be permitted. Jesus sent 
him away. " Go home," He said, " and tell your 
friends. Go, in your new strength, and face the 
soldiers of the legion, confront the principalities and 
powers." You see how necessary that was. The 
man had begun to recover self-control. What he 
needed now was the daily exercise of his new will. 
He needed to assert himself. Otherwise the thou- 
sand devils would come back, and bring another 
thousand devils with them. That is, our Lord ap- 
plied to despair and despondency the remedy of ac= 



112 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



tive service. He took the man out of the tombs and 
sent him into the populated streets. He set him face 
to face with his kindred and his neighbors. His 
first word was " You have a friend. I am your 
friend. God is your friend His next word was, 
" Go now, and be yourself a friend 

Turn now for a moment to the other actors in this 
dramatic scene, the men with the thousand swine. 

The thousand devils drove the swine into the sea; 
or, if not the devils, anyhow, over went the swine, 
down the steep place. In the meantime the keepers 
fled in the other direction, and went their ways into 
the city and told the owners, and the owners came, 
and all their neighbors with them, " the whole city 
And they saw a healed man, and no swine. Then 
what did they do ? They besought Jesus that he 
would depart out of their coasts. They felt that he 
was a dangerous visitor. 

That is, according to their measure of value, two 
thousand swine were worth more than one man. It 
was a matter of proportion between property and 
humanity. And property outweighed humanity be- 
cause the swine were their own, while the man was 
no great friend of theirs. When the man is our 
own, when we know him and care for him, all the 
material stuff on earth and all the lower animals in- 
cluded are not to be considered in comparison with 
his interests. Even the people who are very keen 
against vivisection would choose that the thousand 
swine should die if that could save their child. But 



A THOUSAND DEVILS 



113 



when it is somebody else's child, especially when the 
question of humanity is far removed, and belongs to 
the slums and to the census, then the question of 
property stands in the foreground of the mind, even 
in Christian countries. Let us not be too hard on the 
Pagans of the country of the Gergesenes., 

But you see the meaning. The most valuable pos- 
session of a country is not its wealth in bank or mill, 
but its own citizens. Better that the whole com- 
munity be poor, with rates of interest low, and divi- 
dends diminishing, than that the standard of human 
life be lowered. Perish the pigs, — at any cost drive 
out the thousand devils. Whoever exalts any ma- 
terial advantage over the good of man, or cares more 
for his profits than for the conditions under which 
they are gathered, joins himself to the breathless 
citizens who, lamenting their drowned swine, desired 
the Lord Jesus to betake himself away. 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a 
re warder of them that diligently seek him. Heb. 11 : 6. 

To come to God is. to perceive the invisible, to be 
conscious of the divine presence, to enter into the 
reality of religion. It implies obedience to the 
eternal laws, and increase in the knowledge and the 
love of God. It means the best there is ; the reward 
of the finest achievement. That, I think, is what the 
writer had in his mind. He was trying to express 
the largest ideal. He was giving a definition of 
success. 

This definition he stated in the terms of religion. 
A man succeeds, he said, in proportion as he draws 
near to God. Here, for example, is a student of the 
laws of physical life; he is trying to find out the 
great facts of the material world in which we live, 
and to understand the environing forces which press 
upon us and determine us, and to bring his knowl- 
edge to bear upon our daily needs. He is in his 
laboratory, or in his mill, or in the midst of affairs, 
intent on this high purpose. He succeeds according 
as he is able to apprehend and master these facts and 
forces. This success he states in such phrases as are 
appropriate to his own particular work and to his 
own disposition. But the words of the text touch 
him, no matter who he is, and no matter what he is 
doing. He is endeavoring to get to God : that is the 

114 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



115 



heart of it. He is trying to understand God, in whom 
the life of all the world consists and proceeds, and 
who reveals Himself in all the natural facts and 
forces. The laws of the universe, which the man of 
science, the man of mechanical or of agricultural in- 
dustry, the man of commerce or of affairs, must un- 
derstand in order to succeed are the habits of God. 
They are God's customary conduct. Success lies in 
the harmony of direction and will between the human 
purpose and the divine order. The wheat crop de- 
pends upon it, and so does the output of steel rails. 
The great ships pass in and out of our ports guided 
by this celestial compass. It is the condition which 
determines all experiments. Progress consists in 
the approach to God : for to come to God is to come 
to truth, and to things as they are. 

I might go on, and add to these illustrations from 
the study and exploration of the physical world, 
similar statements from other fields of endeavor. 
The initial phrase of the text takes in all the depart- 
ments of the university and includes all search for 
truth ; for all truth is in God, and is known by know- 
ing God. So with art and letters, and every other 
attempt to realize the ideal : the ideal is God, towards 
Whom the artist and the scholar are consciously or 
unconsciously trying to draw near. 

That is, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
is here considering in a single illuminative sentence 
the conditions of success. " He that cometh to God " 
is a description of the man who is achieving that 



116 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



high attainment. That which we all alike desire, 
various as may be our aspirations and our methods, 
that is what is here stated in terms of religion. 

He that cometh to God, then, he who would make 
a success of his life, — what must he do? He must 
believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of 
them that diligently seek Him. This is an assertion, 
first, of the necessity of faith, and then of certain 
essential contents of faith. The best attainment, the 
writer says, depends on faith and especially on that 
fundamental faith which perceives the being and the 
providence of God. 

He that cometh to God must believe. That is the 
essential thing. And what does that mean? It 
means that our relation to the life in which we live 
depends upon our attitude towards the two great 
parts of which that life is composed. One part com- 
prises all that is definitely known ; the other and far 
larger part includes all that is unknown. It is plain 
that the known and the unknown touch us at every 
turn, and that we are happy or unhappy according 
to the response which we make. 

Here on the one side are the ascertained facts into 
the possession of which the race has gradually come 
in the course of ages of experiment and experience. 
Nations are described as civilized or uncivilized ac- 
cording to the number of such facts which they have 
under their hands and are putting into effective use. 
I mean our understanding of nature and of human 
nature, so far as we have gone, — the materials out 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



117 



of which laws are made, the principles which govern 
the practice of medicine, the forces which are utilized 
in the processes of manufacture, and all the result- 
ing comforts and conveniences of life. This is the 
province of what we call knowledge. 

On the other side is mystery, — the vast unex- 
plored region of the unknown. The moment we 
begin to think, we find ourselves facing the unex- 
plained. We ask questions only to learn that though 
they are answers, the answers are not based on 
knowledge. I have in mind the universal conditions 
of human life. Here we are, mysteriously existing 
in a world of whose purpose and meaning we are 
ignorant, even as we are ignorant concerning our own 
nature. It is a disputed question whether or not 
man has a soul. The question admits of endless de- 
bate because it cannot be settled by the tests of 
knowledge. There is no appeal, as in chemistry, to 
objective facts clearly and unmistakably ascertained. 
And if we have a soul, if we are not only material 
but spiritual beings, what does that mean? There 
is no adequate answer. Thus the unknown is as 
close to us as our own thoughts. It touches us at 
every point, as the atmosphere touches the earth, 
coming thus mysteriously into mysterious being in a 
world of mystery, we are presently to go as mysteri- 
ously out of it into the dark. Without being con- 
sulted, without reaching the end of the chapter, 
sometimes without warning, out we go and are seen 
no more. Nobody knows, — taking knowledge in its 



118 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



accurate sense, — what is after death. In all the mass 
of strange material gathered together by the Society 
for Physical Research there is not even a micro- 
scopic addition to our knowledge of the world beyond 
the grave. IsTot a saint or prophet of either Testa- 
ment has been able to disclose the least detail of that 
future existence. All that they say is expressed in 
the terms of this present existence. There is nothing 
in it which corresponds to the reports which the ex- 
plorer brings of the sights which he saw in strange 
lands. None of it, that is, belongs to the field of 
knowledge. 

Have we a soul ? have we an endless life to live ? 
is there over all a personal Being who is interested 
in us, who cares, who is in any comforting and assur- 
ing sense our Father ? These questions serve to show 
not only how vast, but how unspeakably important 
is the unknown. The unknown is by far the greater 
part of life : it is also the determining part. I mean 
that the quality of our life, the happiness of it, the 
success or failure of it, depends upon our attitude 
towards the unknown, and our consequent interpreta- 
tion of it. The name of this attitude is faith. 

In the compelling presence of the environing mys- 
tery, man takes one or the other of two very different 
positions. Either he pronounces it good, or he pro- 
nounces it bad. The crises of life force him out of 
the mere animal unconcern to which his is inclined 
in times of peace and thrust him into one or other 
of these two attitudes towards the unknown. He 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



119 



must hope or he must despair; he must believe or 
disbelieve. Faith is the attitude of the man who 
without assured knowledge, sometimes in the face 
of menacing facts, is nevertheless somehow convinced 
that all things are working together for good. He 
takes humanity at its best, and in spite of his sins 
believes that he is a spiritual being. He takes life 
at its best, and believes that God is, and that He is 
a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 

" Religion says Mr. Lowes Dickinson, " is a re- 
action of the highest imagination of the best men 
upon life and the world, so far as we know them by 
experience and science, — a passionate apprehension, 
from the point of view of ideals, of the general situ- 
ation in which we find ourselves It is a better 
definition of faith than it is of religion. Indeed, 
what is it but a contemporary way of saying what 
the writer of the text said to his own time in 
the same chapter, when he declares that " faith is 
the evidence of things unseen ? " Faith is the act 
whereby the unseen is evident, and the unknown is 
plain, to a man. It is " a passionate apprehension, 
from the point of view of ideals, of the general situ- 
ation in which we find ourselves." By virtue of it, 
we resolutely conclude that the environment of mys- 
tery in which we spend our days is good and means 
good, rather than bad. 

Thus the text declares that he that cometh to God 
must believe, meaning that faith is the condition of 
attainment. The explorer who finally discovers 



120 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



something, is the man who believes that there is 
something to be discovered. The reformer who at 
last accomplishes some substantial betterment in the 
conditions of human life is the man who believes in 
the good that there is in human nature, and who be- 
lieves also that all endeavor to give that good a 
chance is in accord with the eternal purposes of the 
universe. Faith goes before attainment. Belief is 
essential to success. The initial thing is a sturdy 
confidence that the world is worth while ; and that is 
the first letter in the alphabet of faith. 

He that cometh to God must believe: what must 
he believe ? He must believe that God is, and that 
He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 
These are the fundamental contents of faith. They 
are the essential notes of religion. When religion 
is defined as consisting " in the perception of the 
Infinite under such manifestations as are able to 
influence the moral nature of man/' the definition 
is a fair translation of the text. To perceive the 
Infinite is to believe that God is; and to recognize 
the intimate relation between God and the life of 
man is to know that He is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him. Here is the difference between 
religion and any other form of human goodness. 

The counsels of ethics, for example, keep pru- 
dently within the field of knowledge. They are the 
formulated results of experience. Even within these 
narrow limits, they may be useful and excellent, but 
their defect and their consequent inferiority to re- 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



121 



ligion is in the fact that they abstain from the larger 
part of life. They have no interpretation of the un- 
known. When the unknown presses upon us, and in 
the stress and strain of life we appeal to ethics or 
even to philosophy for aid, there is no answer. Re- 
ligion brings to human conduct the assistance of the 
assertion that the unknown is on the side of the right. 
In the midst of the mystery which surrounds us, God 
dwells, the God of light, the God of love. To the 
cold prudence of ethics, religion adds the enthusiasm 
of faith. 

The text is content to assert these elemental facts 
of faith, — that God is, and that He is a rewarder of 
them that diligently seek Him. It does not attempt 
to prove either of these assertions. Nowhere does 
this writer, nor any other Bible teacher, bring to the 
enforcement of his words the aid of argument. 

This is partly because the books of the Bible were 
more of them intended to be read by unbelievers. 
As a matter of fact, the Bible has been found to be a 
missionary document of convincing value, but it was 
not composed for missionary purposes. Its consist- 
ent intention is to renew and deepen and strengthen 
the spirit of religion, never to create it. It has per- 
suaded men by indirection, not by reasoning; as a 
good man persuades his neighbors rather by what he 
is than by what he says. They come over to his side 
not by the straight path of logic, not between the 
level fences of syllogism, but across-lots, they know 
not how. So it is with the Bible. The Bible is a 



122 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



book of religion, not a book about religion. That i 
the difference between art and criticism, between life 
and biology, between the oratorio of the Messiah 
and the essays which are written to explain it. In 
the Bible is religion, more or less pure and unde- 
filed, more or less mixed with inevitable misappre- 
hension and defect; but still, religion, — and, being 
religion, therefore apart from argument. 

For the other reason why these great assertions 
are not rested on foundations of logic is that such 
foundations are as foreign to them as a pedestal is 
to a piece of music. You may put a marble statue 
on a pedestal, but you cannot thus support a sym- 
phony. For faith, as I said, and religion as the ex- 
pression of faith, is an attitude towards life: a cer- 
tain cheerfulness, hopefulness, courage and confi- 
dence in the face of the unescapable changes and 
chances, which is the result of an indefinable convic- 
tion that the unknown is the dwelling-place of good. 
That is, faith deals with the unknown, and thus has 
its business in a country whose mystic ports are in- 
accessible to reason. Faith takes its way along the 
illimitable sea into the horizons which are inhabited 
by the mysteries. But reason, traveling with horse 
and cart, halts hopelessly upon the shore. Faith is 
as elusive of the pursuit of definition as hope, or 
patience, or the appreciation of beauty, or any other 
spiritual quality. It escapes the logician as life 
escapes the biologist. " How do you know so much 
about the unknown ? " says the pessimist, with a 



FAITH AND ATTAINMENT 



123 



scowl and a sharp voice. " How do you know all 
these fine things about the soul and God and the 
world unseen and beyond? How do you know that 
the universe is good ? " And faith answers, unper- 
turbed and smiling, " I don't know how I know it, 
but I know." 

Thus faith, facing the inscrutable, declares that 
God is. Over all the plains and hills, over the conti- 
nents and oceans, in the far spaces, where the stars 
shine and here where we live and breathe and go 
about our daily business, the soul of the universe, 
the maker and maintainer of it, and of us in the 
midst of it, revealing Himself in the splendor of the 
firmament and in the succession of the fruitful sea- 
sons, — all that we see, all that comes to pass, all 
that is, visible and invisible, being of Him and in 
Him, nature His garment and man an image and 
dim reflection of Him, — God Almighty reigns. 
Faith looks steadily into the unknown and beholds 
Him. Out of the unknown we come, in the midst of 
the unknown we have our being, into the unknown 
we go, but always and everywhere God is with us; 
in His might, His goodness and His love we trust. 
Like Enoch, of whom the words of the text were 
written, we walk with God, holding the hand of God. 
Thus by faith, with all the saints, we comprehend 
the eternal breadth and length and height. We 
know the love of Christ, in whom the divine is mani- 
fest,— the love of Christ " which passeth knowl- 
edge We are filled with all the fulness of God. 



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For faith, fronting the unknown, declares not only 
that God is, but that He is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him. That is, while we thus look 
into the impenetrable mysteries and there behold 
God, out of them God beholds us and is interested 
in us, and cares for us and helps us. On our side, 
we diligently seek Him, endeavoring more and more 
to understand His will, to draw near to Him along 
the way of philosophy, along the way of art, along 
the way of mastery of the world, along the way of 
religion; and on His side, He rewards us, always 
waiting to be gracious, always desiring to teach us, 
always assisting our endeavors and blessing us with 
unexhausted blessings. Thus the diligent search for 
God, which means, as we have seen, the diligent 
search for truth and right, for the supreme ideal, is 
everlastingly worth while. It is according to His 
will, who first gives us that high aspiration, and then 
unceasingly rewards it with attainment. 

" O that I knew where I might find Him ! " is the 
cry of the heart of man bewildered amongst the mys- 
teries of life. And the cry is answered in those 
mystic words of Jesus, which, though unrecorded in 
the New Testament, have been kept all these centuries 
till now in the sands of Egypt, " Lift the stone and 
thou shalt find Me; cleave the word and there I 
am All the honest work of the world is a dis- 
closure of God, all good achievement brings men 
nearer to Him, — -nearer to Him who is, and is a 
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 



THE NEAEEE SIDE 



The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those 
things which are revealed belong unto us. Deut. 29 : 29. 

They need not be different things, some of them 
in God's possession, others in ours. Often they are 
the same things, which are partly God's alone, while 
partly they are given unto us. They are two-sided. 
They have a secret meaning, which is known in 
heaven; and they have a revealed meaning, which is 
perceived on earth. 

Some of the more important of these things, thus 
alike secret and revealed, are stated in the creed. 
Certain of them, such as those with which the creed 
is begun and with which it is ended, are held by 
Christians in common with the great company of 
human beings the world over. In every religion there 
is a doctrine of the being of God and a doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul. Other contents of the 
creed are peculiar to Christianity. They are the 
message which God sends to men through us. And 
of these characteristic doctrines three are chief: the 
doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, and the doctrine of the Atonement. 

Each of these doctrines may be stated either posi- 
tively or metaphysically. The positive statement is 
the assertion itself, the brief declaration of the creed, 

125 



126 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



The metaphysical statement is the explanation which 
is given of it by thoughtful persons. These two 
kinds of statement are of different endurance : one is 
permanent, while the other is temporary. The ex- 
planation changes, according as men grow wiser, but 
the fact remains. Thus, men have explained the 
stars, and then have changed their minds and ex- 
plained them over again, the wisdom of one genera- 
tion seeming but folly to the next; but through the 
whole discussion, the stars have gone on shining. 

It is of importance to make a clear distinction be- 
tween the positive and the metaphysical elements of 
the faith. The failure to appreciate this distinction 
makes much trouble for two quite different kinds of 
minds: the conservative and the radical. Conserv- 
ative people see that changes are taking place in 
theological opinion, and the sight offends and alarms 
them. It seems to them that the essentials of re- 
ligion are in peril, and that, if these audacious wri- 
ters and speakers have their way, the creed, and then 
the Bible, and then the church will be steadily pushed 
over a steep cliff into the bottomless pit. They do 
not distinguish between the truth itself, and the 
things which people say about it. They confuse the 
formula with the fact. They are afraid that the 
astronomers will injure the stars. 

On the other hand, many radical persons who are 
greatly dissatisfied with what they understand to 
be the Christian religion, are really dissatisfied only 
with the interpretations which have been attached to 



THE NEARER SIDE 



127 



it. They have no quarrel with the New Testament. 
Few of them have any quarrel with the Apostle's 
Creed. 

In any case, this process of change is bound to go 
on, and nobody can stop it. The metaphysical state- 
ments of one generation cannot satisfy the minds of 
another generation until men cease to learn or to 
think. The formula of accepted belief is always that 
bold and singular phrase of the Apostles in the Acts : 
" It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us 
And the personal pronoun will always be empha- 
sized. But the change is in the metaphysical, not in 
the positive assertion of the faith. That is, the 
change is in the inevitably fallible human element in 
theology, not in the substantial divine element. 

Leaving now this distinction between two ways of 
stating truth, I come to a more important distinction 
still, which is set forth in the text. I mean the dif- 
ference between the two sides of every great truth, — 
the secret side which belongs to God, and the revealed 
side which belongs to us; the divine side, hidden in 
clouds and darkness, as the psalmist says, and the 
human side, shining with righteousness and judg- 
ment. These are the nearer and the farther sides of 
truth: the nearer side, which we can see and in a 
measure understand; and the farther side, of which 
we catch uncertain glimpses, but which we cannot 
perceive clearly because it is mostly beyond the 
limit of our present sight, — we may know more 
about it in the life to come. 



128 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



This distinction I purpose to illustrate by apply- 
ing it to each of the three great characteristic doc- 
trines of the Christian faith. 

The doctrine of the Trinity is that the Father is 
God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, 
and yet they are not three Gods, but one God. A 
briefer statement is that there are three persons in 
one God. 

This doctrine, on its nearer side, is in the first 
place, an assertion of the oneness of God. There is 
but one God. This is the essential and supreme fact 
of religion. It is impossible to insist with too much 
earnestness upon the unity of God. Whoever holds 
in any way that there are more Gods than one, not 
only incurs the damnations of the Athanasian creed, 
but contradicts the central position of Christianity. 

The doctrine is also, however, a statement con- 
cerning the nature of God. It asserts the threeness 
of God. The number three however as thus used, 
is not an arithmetical but a symbolical expression. 
It is a natural form of human speech to signify com- 
plexity. It means that the nature of God is not 
simple, like the nature of the lower orders of being, 
but complex, like the nature of the higher orders of 
being, — like ourselves, made in his image. Each of 
us, being one, is at the same time body, mind and 
soul. So God, being one, is at the same time Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost. 

The theological use of the word " person " has 
seriously increased the difficulty of the doctrine of 



THE NEARER SIDE 



129 



the Trinity. For unfortunately, it has a meaning in 
the street which is altogether different from its mean- 
ing in the church. In ordinary conversation, when 
we speak of a person, we mean an individual ; and 
then we ask, How can God be three individuals in 
one individual ? plainly, it is impossible. But the 
theological word " person " does not mean an indi- 
vidual at all. The Latin persona comes from per, 
meaning " through and sonas, meaning ' ; sound " ; 
and was applied to an actor, who in those days was 
always masked. He spoke through a mask. The 
word signified the character in which one appeared ; 
as it is still used in the theatrical phrase, Dramatis 
persona?. And then as now one actor might play sev- 
eral parts, wear different masks, appear in various 
characters. The theological meaning is that the one 
God appears or acts in different ways. So in the 
Catechism we say that we believe in God the Father, 
who made us, in God the Son, who redeemed us, — 
only one God, related to us, dealing with us, acting 
in the divine drama of human life in these three 
ways. 

Thus, when we say that God made the world and 
maintains it, we are thinking of God as the Father, 
when we say that God has revealed Himself in hu- 
man history, in men, especially and uniquely in 
Jesus Christ, we are thinking of the same Lord as 
the Son. When we say that God speaks in con- 
science, and is at the heart of all right words and 
deeds, the inspirer of all righteousness and truth, we 



130 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



are thinking of God, — the same God, — as the Holy 
Ghost. It is the one God doing different things, as 
it is the one man who plants a tree, and writes a 
book, and loves his friends. 

This is the nearer side of the doctrine of the 
Trinity. Thus much we can understand. Perceiv- 
ing only so much as this, we can see for ourselves 
that this is the highest expression of the best human 
thought about God, immeasurably richer and nobler 
than the conception of Him in the Old Testament. 
Then we go on into the regions which lie beyond 
definition and understanding, whose high peaks 
faintly shine in mysterious sentences of Holy Scrip- 
ture, and we infer from these indications that these 
manifestations correspond to distinctions in the essen- 
tial nature of God. If we are philosophers we delight 
to ponder these essential distinctions, and to make 
speculative journeys into the borders of these remote 
regions. If we are ordinary plain people, we confess 
that these are matters about which we cannot possibly 
know much ; and we suspect that it would not do us 
much good if we did. 

The doctrine of the Incarnation is that Jesus 
Christ is at the same time God and man. 

There is a universal human instinct which craves 
an embodiment of God. It appears in idolatry, the 
desire of which is to give men something divine 
which they can touch and see. It built the Greek 
and Roman temples, and made them glorious with 
statues of the gods. It is at the heart of Buddhism, 



THE NEARER SIDE 



131 



wherein God is incarnated in an ideal man, in the 
good Gautama. It is especially needed in the stage 
of thought in which we live, who do not think of 
God as sitting on a throne in the midst of heaven, 
but as present in all life, in whom we live and move 
and have our being. This is a very impersonal 
thought of God, — this which is brought to us by the 
discovery of the principle of evolution: truer, no 
doubt, but for faith and affection much more diffi- 
cult. How can we love God when He is omnipresent 
as the air? God as eternal, infinite, omnipotent, is 
beyond the reach of our common affection: though 
the highest spirits, — poets and prophets, — have been 
able to give Him, even in this form, their love and 
adoration. Most of us feel the need of a more near 
and definite approach to God than that. 

Moreover, in God, if He is indeed our Father, 
there must be a desire to make Himself known to us. 
He must wish to reveal to us His will and His love. 
That is the parental instinct, which we recognize in 
our own hearts, and by which we infer the disposi- 
tion of God, Who is all that is best in us raised to 
infinity. In what language, then, shall God reveal 
Himself? In what universal speech, amidst our 
Babel of discordant tongues, shall He address the 
race? Out of all possible communications — by 
books, by prophets, by the wide page of nature, — 
one is evidently fittest. There is one experience com- 
mon to all human kind, and that is the experience of 
human life. If God would teach us how to live, let 



132 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



Him not give us lessons in precepts, but let Him 
show us by the act of living. Let Him come here and 
live, manifesting Himself in our flesh, thus shall He 
reveal both His will and His love. 

These two supreme desires, human and divine, 
meet in Jesus Christ, who is at the same time God 
and man. He is man : we see that plainly enough in 
every page of the Gospels — the Son of man, as 
He loved to call Himself — and as we look, behold 
He is God also, the eternal God, dwelling in man. 
God, indeed, dwells in every man, and is manifested 
in every thought and deed of good. The sages and 
the saints help us to perceive God, as the lamp helps 
us to understand the sun. The sun is in the lamp ; 
God is in the saint. But in Jesus Christ dwells all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily. That we know 
not by any argument, not by any laborious compari- 
son of texts, but by the act of recognition. Jesus is 
recognized as Divine by beholding Him, as a great 
piece of music is recognized by hearing it. The 
argument is Himself. The believer sees God in 
Christ. 

Thus the nearer side of the doctrine of the Incar- 
nation is that Jesus Christ, the Spiritual Master of 
the race, is the manifestation of God. God who is 
present in all life, and lives in us all, shines in Him 
with a unique brightness and speaks through Him 
with a unique clearness. This, you remember, is 
what the theological word " person " means : that in 
which or through which one speaks. Christ is the 



THE NEARER SIDE 



133 



Second Person of the Holy Trinity. So that when 
we would think the nearest thoughts of God, we think 
of Jesus Christ. When we would draw close to God, 
and learn of Him and love Him, we approach Jesus 
Christ. God is not manifested in Christ as the 
Father; that is, as the maintainer of the world. 
Neither is He manifested in Him as the Holy Ghost; 
that is, as the informer of the conscience. God is 
in Christ as the Son, or, in the phrase of the Fourth 
Gospel, as the Word; that is, the utterance, the ex- 
pression, of the Divine love and will. Christ is God, 
in the sense that God reveals Himself in Him. 

The farther side of the doctrine is that Jesus 
Christ is not only very God and very man, — God of 
God, as the Nicene Creed says, that is, God from 
God, — but that this manifestation of divinity has 
been in being from all eternity, and is one of those 
essential distinctions in the nature of God of which 
I spoke regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. But 
this is out of our mental sight. We know that Jesus 
said " Before Abraham was, I am We know that 
it is written in the first sentence of the Fourth 
Gospel, " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God "—the 
same Word which was " made flesh and dwelt among 
us ". But these are the far summits of the celestial 
country, hidden in the haze of infinite distance. 
They remind us that the truth which is in our posses- 
sion is but the merest border of an immeasurable con- 
tinent. Nevertheless, here we live; here, in this 



134 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



narrow border, in this clearing, in the edge of a 
forest unexplored. And the near truth is what we 
live by. Here we stand, disciples of Jesus with all 
our hearts and minds, loving Him and adoring Him 
according to what is plainly Divine about Him, 
dimly conscious of mystery beyond. 

The Doctrine of the Atonement is that Jesus 
Christ died to save us from our sins. The distinc- 
tion of which I spoke between the positive and the 
metaphysical elements of faith is easily made in this 
doctrine because the metaphysical statement of it 
has been changed several times. 

Thus in the early centuries of the Christian re- 
ligion, it was universally believed that the death of 
Christ was a price paid to the devil for our souls. 
It was the result of a hard bargain. We had de- 
livered our own souls over to the devil. We had be- 
come his slaves by reason of our sins. God proposed 
to the devil to exchange all these poor souls of ours 
for the one divine soul of Jesus Christ, His Son. 
The devil perceived that this transaction would be 
for his advantage, and accepted the offer. The death 
of Christ was the result. Thereby the devil released 
us, and laid hold on Him. But now the unexpected 
happened. Satan had indeed seized the Son of God 
and brought Him into the black prison of death. 
The next thing was to keep Him there. And that 
proved to be impossible. On the third day He broke 
the gate, overcame the guard, and escaped. Thus 



THE NEARER SIDE 



135 



the devil was put to ignominious defeat. He had re- 
leased us, and he was forced to release Christ. The 
death of Jesus Christ was, therefore, the price paid 
for our souls. 

As time went on, however, and good men reflected 
upon this theory of our salvation, it failed to satisfy 
them. That God should thus deceive and cheat even 
the devil seemed to them to be inconsistent with the 
Divine truth and justice. So they put it in another 
way. The death of Christ, they said, was not offered 
to the devil, but to God. All offences, they argued, 
are debts which men incur to God. But since every 
man owes to God all the possible good deeds of his 
whole life, he has no available fund of goodness out 
of which to pay the debt. He must therefore be cast 
into the debtor's prison of hell, there to remain for- 
ever and ever, world without end. The only means 
of release is the appearance of a rich friend who will 
assume the debt. There was a pleasant theory to the 
effect that the saints were persons of spiritual wealth. 
The saints, it was said, had done more than was 
needed to save their own souls, and their superogatory 
virtues made a treasury of merit upon which the 
church could draw to meet the deficits in the ac- 
counts of sinners. But the stern logic of the refor- 
mers refused this opportunity of escape. No man 
could save his brother or make atonement unto God 
for him. God might indeed, forgive the debt; but 
this would take away the seriousness of sin. The 
debt must be exacted : only the Son of God could pay 



136 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



it. But Jesus, as man, owes to the Father, like any 
other being, all the good deeds which He can possibly 
do: He cannot therefore pay the debt by living His 
good life. What He does not owe is the shame and 
suffering of His death, for, being without sin, He has 
not merited that. So He dies ; and the death of the 
Son of God is of such immeasurable value that it 
counterbalances all our debt, and by His blood we 
are saved. 

This metaphysical statement was gradually substi- 
tuted for that of the early fathers. Men believed no 
longer that the death of Christ was for the sake of 
the devil: it was for the sake of God. The new 
statement came to be regarded as an integral part of 
the Christian religion. People were required to be- 
lieve not only that Christ died for our sins, but that 
His death was in this particular and only way 
effective. The new theory, however, omitted two im- 
portant considerations. One is that sin is an interior 
matter, an organic fact. Sin is something which is 
the matter with us, like a disease. It is impossible 
that we should be saved from it by any sort of ex- 
terior transaction. The only salvation is one which 
shall change us. The other omitted fact is that 
Christ was not simply put to death, like a sacrifice. 
He gave Himself. This is insisted upon again and 
again in the New Testament. The heart of the whole 
matter is the love which He thereby showed for us 
sinners for whom He died. " We ", as St. Paul says, 
" were reconciled to God by the death of His Son 



THE NEARER SIDE 



137 



Thus it was neither for the sake of the devil, nor 
for the sake of God, but for the sake of us men, that 
Christ died. The purpose of His death was to ap- 
peal to us, to reconcile us to God, to bring us out of 
our sins to God, and this purpose it effected by its 
manifestation of the divine love. God so loved the 
world that He gave His only-begotten Son that the 
sight of that sacrifice, the fact of that death for us, 
might make us love God and hate sin. 

And here, you see, is the nearer side of the doc- 
trine of the atonement. We can all understand this. 
We can all see how the death of Christ, thus reveal- 
ing the love of God and the hatefulness of sin, saves 
us. It saves us from our sins. The blood of Jesus 
Christ cleanseth us from all sin. 

There is a farther side, a mystery of the atone- 
ment, a secret of the cross, which God knows, and 
into which with all our wisdom we can enter but a 
little way. Happily, we are saved by the blood of 
Jesus Christ, not by our understanding of the mean- 
ing of His death upon the cross. 

These distinctions in the three cardinal doctrines 
of the Christian creed hold in all other doctrines. 
Each of them has its positive element which is per- 
manent, and its metaphysical element which is sub- 
ject to change. Each of them has its nearer and its 
farther sides. In each of them there are secret 
things which belong unto the Lord our God, and 
there are revealed things which belong unto us. May 
God help us so to believe and live in this life present, 



138 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



that in the world to come we may enter into the 
boundless heritage of truth which He has prepared 
for those who are of an humble spirit, and who love 
Him with a steadfast love. 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



God is not a man. Num. 23 : 19. 

Two men stood together on a hilltop, and looked 
down through the mists of the early morning upon 
the tents of an army encamped along the plain be- 
neath them. One was a king against whom this 
army had come to fight ; the other was a priest who 
had come to help the king. The king had summoned 
the priest to curse his enemies, and the priest, after 
his pagan manner, had built him seven altars among 
the rocks on the summit of the hill, and had made a 
fire on every altar, and had offered on every altar a 
bullock and a ram. That was his way of calling 
upon God ; of attracting, as he thought, the attention 
of God. And then he went away by himself to hear 
what might be spoken in his heart by the God who 
heeds the prayers of all His children. And the 
Lord met Balaam and put a word in his mouth and 
said, " Go again unto Balak, and say thus So he 
went back, the priest to the king, and the first sen- 
tence that he spoke was this, which I have taken for 
a text : 66 God is not a man 

The most important truth that anybody can learn 
is truth about God. Because our idea of God affects 
all the other ideas which we have about life. It is not 
likely that any two men have exactly the same concep- 
tion of God. But it is plain that every man's honest 

139 



140 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



thought about God represents his honest thought about 
that which is right and best. No man sets himself 
above God. On the contrary, all men set God in their 
thoughts very far above themselves. All that is most 
noble and fine and desirable in character is contained 
in a man's idea of God. When you know what any 
human being actually thinks about God, you know 
what sort of life he accounts to be most excellent. 
He may not be living just that life, but for every 
departure from it his conscience reproves him. That 
he knows to be the best. To that life he believes that 
he is called. Thus careless people who have vague 
ethical ideas, and make no imperative distinction be- 
tween right and wrong, believe in their hearts in a 
careless God. They are of the opinion that God 
cares no more for the Ten Commandments than they 
do. That old story of the Tables of Stone, handed 
down out of a thunder-cloud on Sinai, is accounted 
by them an idle tale. The true law of God is writ- 
ten, as St. Paul said, " not in tables of stone, but in 
fleshy tables of the heart But to them the fleshy 
tables of the heart signify the inclinations of the 
flesh as distinguished from the inclinations of the 
spirit. That is, they find the will of God in the de- 
sires of man. They put their faith in that kind of 
God; and they arrange their life accordingly. It 
makes all the difference in the world what a man 
actually believes about God. 

The first fact taught by this text is contained in 
the person of the speaker. Balaam was a pagan 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



141 



priest. The Bible story tells us that God listened to 
the prayer of that pagan priest and answered it. 
And that is in itself a great truth about God. 

God is the universal Father. Wherever He sees a 
human being, He sees one of His children. And the 
heavenly Father- loves His children every one of 
them. It matters not to Him what tongue they speak : 
God understands Chinese as well as English. Some 
people used to think that the favorite language of 
God is Hebrew. When the first bishop of Massa- 
chusetts took his Master's defence at Harvard, he 
debated in his thesis the question, " Will the 
blessed in the future world, after the last judgment, 
make use of articulate speech, and will that be 
Hebrew ? " This he decided in the affirmative. But 
the discussion amuses rather than convinces us. It 
matters not to God what is the color of a man's skin, 
or the fashion of his coat, or where he lives, or how 
wise he is, or how civilized he is. It matters not 
what name the man sets at the beginning of his 
prayer — Allah, or Odin, or Jove, or Jehovah — the 
name is but a human convenience, like the designa- 
tions of the stars. This pagan priest, in the old 
story, pronouncing his mistaken incantations, build- 
ing his foolish altars, was heard of God as imme- 
diately, as attentively, as lovingly, as if he had said 
his prayers in the sanctuary of a cathedral. That is 
what the Bible says, and our hearts respond to the 
saying. It is a necessary part of the doctrine of the 
universal fatherhood of God. 



142 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



All religion, all petition, the whole world over, 
ascends into the great heart of the one divine Father. 
People sometimes speak as if different religions have 
addressed themselves to different gods: or as if, not 
appealing to God as we conceive of Him, they have 
not appealed to God at all. And it is true, as St. 
Paul said, that an idol is not anything. It is likely 
that many a Chinaman who sets his stick of incense 
in the tub of sand at the foot of an image of God 
is as destitute of the spirit of true prayer as many a 
Christian who makes the responses in the litany 
while his eyes wander and his thoughts wander with 
them. But every worshiper, with or without an 
idol, with or without the symbol of the smoke of in- 
cense, who in an honest and true heart speaks a word 
into the air, and begs a blessing of the Invisible, 
prays to the same God to whom we pray, and is our 
brother in the same divine household. The Father 
of Heaven, who hears the prayers which are offered 
in the name of his Son, our Saviour, attends also to 
the devotions of all heathen temples, to the services 
that are said in mosques, to the adoration which is 
offered in the shrines of Thibet, and to the rude cries 
which are addressed to Him in the darkness of the 
jungles of Africa. All religion, of whatever name, is 
the expression of man's longing for closer intercourse 
with God. The difference between Christianity and 
paganism is not that God loves Christians and dis- 
regards pagans but that we know a little more than 
they do of the infinite truth about God, of which 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



143 



the wisest of us have but a blundering knowledge. 
From the east and from the west shall men come in 
the day of the Great Assembly, out of all nations and 
languages, out of all religions, and shall sit down 
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, with Peter and 
John and Paul, in the kingdom of heaven. " Of 
a truth," said the Apostle Peter. " I perceive that 
God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation 
he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is 
accepted with Him." 

That is the first fact about God which is taught 
by this text, being contained in the person of the 
speaker. The second fact is contained in the words 
which the speaker uttered: God is not a man. 

We must, indeed, both speak and think of God 
under the figure of a man. In the old days, this was 
the only conception of God which was possible to 
man, as it is still the natural and necessary thought 
of little children. The men and women of the 
world's childhood had no mind for abstractions. 
Everything had to be concrete. All motion was 
conceived to be the push or pull of someone's hand. 
The sun came up in the morning because somebody, 
sitting in that chariot of flame, drove its horses of 
red cloud. There was as yet no conception of any 
disembodied force or existence. The invariable fact 
of experience was that of embodied personality. God, 
accordingly, to be thought of at all, must be imagined 
as an embodied personality. He was the superlative 
of man the positive, not only in mind and soul but 



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also in corporeal parts and passions. He was a great, 
supernatural man, having hands and feet, and eyes 
and ears, like a man. He came down and walked 
among the trees of Eden, in the cool of the day. 
The beginnings of religion, like the beginnings of 
individual life in childhood, are pervaded and de- 
termined by this human idea of God. 

And although we know better than that to-day, 
although we know very well that God has no body, 
and does not live in heaven as a king lives in a 
palace, coming in and going out, but inhabits all 
the world and is not far from everyone of us, and is 
a spirit and not a man, still the old forms and speech 
continue in our conversation. We go on speaking of 
God as if He were a man, and thinking of Him as a 
man, and must so speak and think because we have 
no other language. Our vocabulary has no other 
expression of spiritual truth than the rude dialect 
of metaphor. We speak of seeing truth, but no eye 
can see truth. We speak of " feeling " the emotions 
of joy or sorrow, but joy and sorrow are beyond the 
reach of the senses. These blundering words are the 
best expression which we have of intellectual and 
spiritual acts. And we are compelled to use the same 
sort of speech concerning God. God is not a man, 
but man is the highest form of being of which we 
have any experience, and unless we are to keep silence 
we must represent God to our minds under this sym- 
bol. 

Indeed, the only adequate revelation of God which 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



145 



the race has ever had was given in the life of man. 
When we read in the Gosepl, first that 66 the Word 
was God " 9 and then that " the Word was made flesh 
and dwelt among us ", we seem for a moment to have 
come upon a contradiction of the text. If the begin- 
ning of the Gospel of St. John is true, can we say that 
God is not a man? That God became man is the 
central affirmation of the Christian creed. 

But there are three ways of thinking about God in 
His revelation to the world. Sometimes we think of 
God as eternal and infinite, as omnipotent and omni- 
present, as the maker and guide of all the myriad 
worlds, as the God of nature. In this sense, God 
did not become man. Christ, as He taught in Caper- 
naum and died for our sake outside the wall of Jeru- 
salem, was not occupied with the guidance of the 
courses of the planets, nor administering the even 
justice of the law of gravitation. Sometimes we think 
of God as the ultimate source of all morality, as the 
divine judge of all the earth, as the invisible teacher, 
inspirer and leader of the race out of the worse into 
the better, helping and directing, speaking in the sen- 
tences of orators and in the verse of poets, whispering 
to the children of genius the beautiful secrets of art 
and music, behind all reformation, all martyrdom, 
the soul of all human goodness, the God of conscience, 
the God of humanity. In this sense, God did not 
become man. Christ, as He lay in the manger in 
Bethlehem, and learned His lessons in the school of 
Nazareth, and preached the Sermon on the Mount, 



146 



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was not at the same time inspiring the Greeks 
with the sense of beauty or training the Latins 
in the principles of government. Neither as the 
God of nature, nor as the God of humanity, did 
God become man. We escape much of the difficulty 
which besets the doctrine of the incarnation when we 
understand that it does not include either of these 
attributes of God. When we think that first thought 
of God we are thinking of God as the Father: when 
we think that second thought of God we are think- 
ing of God as the Holy Spirit. And no sentence 
either in Holy Scripture or in Christian theology 
declares that either as Father or as Holy Spirit did 
God become man. 

It was " the Word " which became flesh. The Word 
means the utterance, the expression, the revelation of 
God. It means the bringing of all the spiritual sig- 
nificance of God's being in nature and in humanity 
into articulate and concrete form, so that we may 
understand it. For nature and humanity speak but 
vaguely to the majority of men. God's dealing with 
the universe and with the race is too great for the 
grasp of the human mind. Though we are ourselves 
resident here in the world which God has made, and 
though we have manifold lessons of history and of 
experience to show us how God is concerned with 
man, we cannot take it in. We need a simpler, and 
plainer and closer manifestation of God. The geolo- 
gists and the astronomers study God in nature, and 
the historians and the philosophers study God in 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



147 



humanity, but, after all is said, we are in perplexity. 
What is the relation of God to my soul ? What is 
the will of God for my life ? What is the purpose of 
God for my future ? These questions are answered in 
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He who at 
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time 
past and still speaks by His dealings with the world 
and with the race, hath also spoken to us by His Son. 
God is manifest in the universe as the Father ; God 
is manifest in the race as the Spirit ; God is manifest 
in one man, in Christ Jesus, as the Son. 

Nevertheless, God is not a man. He is immeas- 
urably more and inexpressibly better than any man. 
" God is not a man," said Balaam, " that He should 
lie, neither the Son of man that He should repent." 
" I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I 
will not return to destroy Ephraim," says God by 
Hosea, " for I am God and not man." That is, ac- 
cording to Balaam, God means exactly what He says, 
and will keep His word. According to Hosea, He 
is infinitely patient, infinitely forgiving, infinitely 
loving. 

Thus we come to a third fact, or group of facts. 
The first fact taught by the text was found in the 
person of the speaker, a pagan priest, to whom the 
Universal Father listened. The second fact was 
found in the words which he spoke, wherein God is 
declared to transcend all our human standards of 
comparison. The third fact is found in the applica- 



148 



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tion of the words, which were made by Balaam first, 
and then by Hosea. 

The difference between God and man, according 
to Balaam, is that God is everlastingly unchange- 
able. Balaam could appreciate that. What he 
wanted was that God should change his mind. Ba- 
laam desired to curse the invading hosts of Israel. 
The king had engaged him for that business. He 
felt in his heart that the cause of Israel was the 
cause of God. But he had been retained by the other 
side. He was in the position of an honest lawyer 
who has been employed by a company of politicians 
who are using the cover of public office as an op- 
portunity to steal the property of a city. Shall he 
serve the cause of his employers, or shall he serve the 
cause of honesty and right, and stand with the men 
who are endeavoring to free the city from the tyr- 
anny of thieves ? He was trying with all his might 
to bring his conscience into subjection, to keep at the 
same time his fee and his self-respect, somehow to 
convince himself that God was against the invading 
reformers under the leadership of Moses, and that a 
good man might therefore curse them consistently. 
Balaam could not do it. He prayed about it, re- 
membering that Balak had promised to give him 
a house full of silver and gold. He prayed a good 
many times and very earnestly, now setting his altar 
here and now there, trying to get such a view of the 
hosts of Israel as should inspire him to righteous 
and profitable malediction. But it was all in vain. 



GOD IS NOT A MAN 



149 



He gave up his retaining fee, and took the side of the 
invaders. God, he said, would permit no other 
course : for God is not a man. God was the friend of 
Israel, and could not be bought nor intimidated. 

It is a great thing to know that we have an ab- 
solutely just Judge. Whoever has listened to the 
testimony in a court of justice, desiring to get at 
the truth, knows what a hard thing it is to give an 
accurate judgment — one of the most difficult of all 
human accomplishments. And whoever has gone to 
court in his own heart, and has listened there to the 
opposing voices, for and against, which make them- 
selves heard in every moment of selection between 
the better and the worse, knows how much influence 
is exerted at that bar by the prospect of gain, by 
the opinion of the great, by the desire of popularity. 
Let us be thankful, then, that the Judge of all the 
earth is not a man ; none of these things move Him ; 
there is no distinction of persons with him. No 
matter who we are, or seem to be, saint or sinner, 
great or small, God will give us absolutely impartial 
and unchanging justice. 

The difference, however, between God and man, 
according to Hosea, is not that God is eternally un- 
changeable, but that God is forever changing. Hosea 
was a preacher both of the love and of the indigna- 
tion of God. First he said that God hated His re- 
bellious people, and that for the wickedness of their 
doings He would drive them away and love them no 
more. But then, by and by, he said that God would 



150 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



heal their backsliding and would love them freely, 
for His anger was turned away from them. That 
is, God now refuses His love and then restores His 
love to the same man: God is forever changing. 

The meaning is that God never changes in his 
maintaining of the right ; God always changes in his 
relation to a man when the man changes in his rela- 
tion to God. There are many things said in the 
Bible about the sure punishment of the wicked, and 
God will bring every one of these hard things to pass 
unchangeably, so long as there are any wicked people. 
Wickedness, indeed, makes its own punishment. 
Punishment will be just as everlasting as sin. But 
let a sinner turn to God, let him look up to God 
out of any blackest depths, either in this world or 
in the world to come, and God will take his hand. 
That is the deduction of Hosea from the fact that 
God is not a man. 

These truths, then, are in this text. First, that 
the God who spoke to Balaam is the God and Father 
of all men everywhere. Second, that as God the 
Father, manifest in the universe and studied in 
science, or as God the Holy Spirit, manifest in the 
race and studied in history, God is not a man ; though 
as God the Son He was manifest in man. Third, 
that in His justice and in His mercy, He passes in- 
finitely beyond the measure of a man. 

To Him we pray; to Him we lift up hands of 
adoration; in His divinely wise and understanding 
heart we put our trust. 



CHRISTIAN DECISION 



As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24 : 15. 

I will not stop to consider the historical setting 
of these words. Let us bring them straight over out 
of that old time into this present. Our chief con- 
cern is not the meaning which they had for Joshua, 
but the meaning which they have this day for us. 

Some of those whom I have in mind are boys and 
girls, who are just now arriving at the age of dis- 
cretion. They are just beginning to understand 
what life is, what a serious business it is, how beset 
it is with moral and spiritual difficulty. They are 
seeking for more strength in ihe face of our uni- 
versal temptations. Some are men and women, who 
are living excellent lives, and who come to all the 
services of the church save one: when it is time 
for the holy communion, they go out. We want 
them to be confirmed, these boys and girls, these 
good men and women. We want them to make the 
Christian Decision, definitely, openly, in the ap- 
pointed way. 

I ask you to observe, in the first place, that the 
speaker in the text speaks for his house; that is, for 
his own family. He is not satisfied to serve the 
Lord alone. His wife is with him, and his sons 
and daughters. Joshua answers for them all. " Be- 

151 



152 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



hold me, Lord," he says, " and those whom thou hast 
given me." 

It is true that at that time the individual was not 
much considered. The childrens' opinion was not 
asked. By common consent, it was the duty of the 
family to follow in the steps of the head of the 
family, asking no questions. When he turned to the 
right, they were to take that road, whether the pros- 
pect pleased them or not. When he decided a matter, 
it was thereby decided for them all, and stayed thus 
decided till he changed his mind. They had no 
minds to change. That was the condition under 
which society proceeded at that time, and everybody 
accepted it. When a man sinned against the law of 
the land, he was not punished alone; his wife and 
his little ones were made to suffer with him. No dis- 
tinction was made between the father and the family. 
The responsibility of the individual, even the sepa- 
rate existence of the individual, was only very dimly 
and remotely recognized. Joshua could very well 
speak for his family. No father or mother can 
speak to-day with that assurance. 

On the contrary, one of the facts which the father 
and mother early perceive is that the child has, as 
we say, a mind of his own. He is distinctly himself. 
They teach him, reprove him, punish him, praise 
him, direct him, but he goes his own way. Yes, in 
a measure they control and shape him; but he sur- 
prises them. The holy family, in our Lord's twelfth 
year, met a universal human experience. Joseph 



CHRISTIAN DECISION 



153 



and Mary thought that they knew him. They 
thought that they could count upon him absolutely: 
their will was His will. Then, of a sudden, He as- 
serted himself. " Son," they said, " why hast thou 
thus dealt with us ? " gently reproaching Him. 
" Wist ye not," He answered, " that I must be about 
my Father's business ? Do you not know that I have 
plans and purposes which are all my own? and that 
I must now determine on which side of the road to 
walk ? " That was an entirely new idea to Joseph 
and Mary, and at first it was not pleasant. It is 
with some pain of natural surprise that the parents 
realize that they cannot entirely answer for the lad. 
There is in Him somewhat native and original, 
whereby He thinks His own thoughts, and has His 
own aspirations and determines His own course. On 
they go, along the familiar highway, taking the beaten 
path ; but when they look back, He is not with them. 
He has quietly turned a corner out of the old road 
into His own way. By and by, J oseph and Mary ad- 
justed themselves to the situation, and saw dimly 
that a new will and a new power had come into the 
world : but not at first. 

So it is with confirmation. The child must come 
of his own will. The parents may preach and pray, 
but they may not compel. Joshua's domestic dis- 
cipline is long outgrown, and happily so. Individ- 
ual responsibility is better. Patient waiting for the 
individual will is better. Nobody should be con- 



154 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



firmed because of the desire of his father and mother. 
The thing is too serious and personal for that. 

This, however, does not dismiss the father and 
mother. The will of the child is not to be com- 
pelled, or even over-urged, but it is to be guided. It 
is true that it is not permitted to parents to go as 
far with their children in religion as in education 
or in behavior. That is, a father may peremptorily 
send his son to college, but not to confirmation. A 
mother may insist that her daughter shall in many 
ways do as she bids, but after a certain time she may 
not oblige her to say her prayers. Prayer and sac- 
rament belong to the interior, individual life, and 
are not amenable to the common law. In this region, 
each of us walks alone. 

Nevertheless, everybody is affected by the persis- 
tent influences of his home. We may no longer say 
with Joshua's confidence, " My family will serve the 
Lord." The best father in the New Testament had 
two sons, one of whom was a selfish fellow, and the 
other was a prodigal. But still the chances are that 
if we serve the Lord ourselves, our family will fol- 
low our example. Out of the Christian household, 
wherein the presence of God is recognized and real- 
ized, where the day begins with family prayer, and 
the domestic life proceeds in the obedience and love 
of the Eternal Father, where the parents are good 
Christians, the children will come to confirmation 
naturally. 

Accordingly, the question which such a text as this 



CHRISTIAN DECISION 



155 



brings to the families of the congregation is a ques- 
tion of personal conduct and example. How is my 
house related to religion? What sort of sermon am 
I daily preaching to my children from the pulpit 
of my own behavior? Is heaven near or far from 
my hearth ? is God real or unreal ? is the life of the 
spirit native or foreign? does conscience speak or 
keep a discreet silence ? is Jesus Christ an historical 
or homiletical person, or is He the actual counsellor 
of the family? Is it perfectly plain that I am a 
Christian? Is it natural to go from my house to 
confirmation and the holy communion, or not ? The 
annual approach of confirmation asks these questions. 
Joshua spoke for his family. What do we say for 
ours ? 

The second matter to which I ask your attention 
is this: Joshua not only spoke for his family, but 
his words for them and for himself were spoken 
openly, in the hearing of his neighbors. He stood 
up there in public, and said the thing aloud. 

This public statement helped his neighbors. That, 
indeed, was the immediate intention of it. That is 
why Joshua said it, — to influence them. And it did 
influence them. At once they rose up, a great multi- 
tude, and cried in chorus, " We too will serve the 
Lord." 

This is to-day one of the effects of the act of con- 
firmation. He who is himself confirmed, brings 
others. He may not speak to them; he may not 
even know them by sight; but they know him and 



156 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



wait for him, and are determined by what he does, 
and when he comes, they come. People sometimes 
lament that goodness is not contagions: but it is. 
It is contagions. In every confirmation class there 
are those who are among that earnest company be- 
cause some friend showed them the way by his 
example. 

It must therefore be said to those who are not 
confirmed, You are not only standing back but hold- 
ing back. Somebody is watching you, and waiting 
to see what you will do. You say, " Why should I 
be confirmed ? I have no need of it. I am getting 
along very well as I am." Let us grant it. It isn't 
true, but let us pretend that it is. You are very 
well as you are: you have no need of the special 
spiritual privileges of the church. But there is a 
friend of yours who needs this moral help. He has 
not so strong a will as you have, or his natural dis- 
position is not so good as yours, or he is more sorely 
tempted than you are. He needs all the religious 
help which he can get. And you stand in his way. 
There he is behind you, waiting for you to go in. 

This is but a subordinate reason for being con- 
firmed: but it is a reason. It would not be sufficient 
of itself. If we were to do right in the constant con- 
sciousness of the excellence of our example, we should 
be artificial and self-conceited and altogether un- 
pleasant Christians. But the fact remains that ex- 
ample counts, and that fact ought to stand out clear 



CHRISTIAN DECISION 



157 



in the perception of everybody who is not in the 
active membership of the church. 

Joshua helped his neighbors, then; but the chief 
thing for us to notice is that his open declaration 
helped himself. As we say, he committed himself. 
The moment he uttered those words he made it 
easier for him to do well, and harder to do ill. That 
is plain human nature. 

The alternative was between the Lord and other 
Gods; between God eternal and invisible and God 
represented by idols and by other material things; 
between a God so great that all the whole world is 
His and all that is therein and a God so small that 
He is affected by the wealth or poverty of those who 
worship him; between a God who cares supremely 
for righteousness and a God who is satisfied by 
ritual. The choice, from this safe distance, seems 
an easy one. But it was very difficult. All of the 
surrounding peoples worshipped other gods. That 
was the conventional and customary thing. It was 
what we mean by the way of the world. J oshua de- 
clared that he purposed to keep out of the way of the 
world. 

Thus he made his open declaration, and the people 
said it over after him. Then what happened ? Then, 
as always, temptation came. The sons of God who 
come to present themselves before the Lord are our 
good resolutions: and Satan comes also, to try if 
the resolutions are as good as we think. But now, 
after this open act of allegience, temptation is not 



158 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



so strong as it was. Now it is an invitation not only 
to do wrong, but to do a wrong which we have de- 
nounced and renounced in the light of day, in the 
hearing of the people. Many people are, in some 
vague and indefinable way, afraid of God ; but many 
more people are very definitely afraid of their neigh- 
bors. "What will people say? is the instinctive ques- 
tion of all prudent persons. 

Joshua, and the nation at his back, stood confi- 
dently upon this universal human fact. They not 
only resolved to do right, but they took an imme- 
diate step to fortify themselves in that position. 
This they did by speaking up in that good stout voice 
in public. For after that, they heard the reminding 
and warning echo of their own words, and remem- 
bered that they had spoken openly. Yesterday, the 
man who worshipped an idol had a dim, uncom- 
fortable fear of being seen by the Lord. To-morrow, 
when he looks in the direction of that idol, he will 
be acutely fearful of being seen by his neighbors, and 
that homely fear will restrain him. We all know 
how that is, by our own experience. 

The alternative is between the Lord and the devil. 
The service of the Lord is the pursuit of righteous- 
ness, the endeavor after the ideal, the common 
struggle to be good. The service of the devil is 
all that is in contradiction to this. It is a hard 
alternative. We can all testify to that. Here we 
are, sons of God and sons of the earth, having a 
heavenly inheritance and at the same time a brute 



CHRISTIAN DECISION 



159 



inheritance within us, drawn two ways, called by two 
voices, doing evil easily. What we need for our 
soul's health is so to order our life that the good 
shall be easier than the bad. We want to set the 
gate wide open into that narrow way of which we 
read in the Bible ; and we want to block up the en- 
trance into the other way, to pile it so high with 
obstacles that we cannot get into that road except by 
deliberately climbing over them. And you see that 
just here is a great part of the psychological value of 
church membership. You see that confirmation and 
habitual attendance at the holy communion help us 
to do just this thing. He who has stood up in the 
presence of God and in the face of his neighbors 
and made the confirmation promise has thereby as- 
sisted his own will. 

After such an act, the world is different. Tempta- 
tion presents itself as of old, to depart from the truth, 
to behave dishonestly, to speak in the dialect of the 
devil, to do that which is mean, or low, or selfish, or 
in some way unworthy of a Christian. But the man 
who has openly declared himself on the side of Christ 
remembers now that he is known by all his kinsfolk 
and acquaintances to have put away these things. 
And that remembrance helps him. Opportunity of- 
fers itself to be useful, patient, considerate, self- 
sacrificing, courteous, a promoter of honesty and 
charity and of all things clean and fine: and this is 
clearly in accord with this Christian position. This 
is what is now expected of him. Coming to coa- 



160 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



firmation and to communion, he surrounds himself 
with an environment of expectation. It is like the 
difference between Matthew the publican and Mat- 
thew the apostle. The publican was one of whom 
nobody expected anything; and he easily lived down 
to that bad opinion. But the apostle was one of 
whom J esus Christ, and eleven fellow apostles, and 
a good many other people expected much. And that 
expectation assisted him. It is hard enough to be 
good: we have all found that out. Shall we not, in 
common prudence, make it as easy as we can ? 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in 
God my Saviour. Luke 1 : 46, 47. 

You know what follows. The Magnificat has en- 
tered into the life of Christendom. It has become a 
part of our religion, an expression of our daily de- 
votion. Standing as it has stood for many centuries 
in the evening prayer of the church, its noble words 
come naturally to our lips ; we have them in our 
hearts. The verses have been set to great music by 
great composers, but never to notes so true and 
beautiful and fitting as the inaudible accompani- 
ment of spiritual experience. As they are sung or 
said, faces and places shine before us. Friends are 
recalled who looked over the same book with us: 
days are remembered, when the service and these 
words of it were the background of our joy or of our 
sorrow. For the service is like the rooms of the 
house in which we have lived for many years: it is 
full of associations. It has for each of us an in- 
dividual interpretation, personal and intimate. 

The holy mother sang her thoughts because plain 
speech was not enough. She put them into poetry 
because no prose was adequate. That is what poetry 
is for, to suggest that which passes all expression. 
She was lifted on the wings of a new and wonderful 

161 



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THE YEAR OF GRACE 



experience. Heaven had opened above her, and she 
had received a message from the Eternal. Imme- 
diately, a light had shone on all that was about her> 
making the homeliest things beautiful and glorious. 
There was a new light in her eyes, and a new joy 
was singing in her heart. The impulse was strong 
upon her to put her high emotion into words. And 
when she spoke the words themselves were ennobled 
like all the common life. Thus it has ever been with 
the making of the best poetry. The poet has felt a 
strong spiritual compulsion. " Woe is me," cried the 
apostle, " if I preach not the gospel ! " " Woe is me," 
cries the poet," if I sing not the new song of my 
soul." This is why the splendid phrases of the 
Magnificat are so full of significance to us, and offer 
themselves so worthily as the utterance of our adora- 
tion. They mean so much to us because they meant 
so much to her. 

The Magnificat is thus the revelation of a beauti- 
ful spirit. It is characteristic of the poets that in 
their verse they admit us into the innermost shrines 
of their souls. Reticent persons they may be, not 
given to talking about themselves, shrinking from 
observation; but when they write, they take us all 
into their confidence. The poems of Wordsworth, the 
poems of Tennyson, the poems of Whittier and of 
Longfellow, are their spiritual biographies. 

The supreme privilege of life is to be acquainted 
with a great soul. This is the most potent of all 
transforming influences. Personality — subtle, eva- 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



168 



sive, but mighty, taking possession of us and making 
a difference in us, — is at the heart of human progress. 
Nothing is of such high consequence as personality. 
A great idea is a helpless, inert thing until a great 
person utters it, urges it, and lives it. The history 
of the race has been determined all along by those 
who have brought truth from God to man through 
personality. The method of the Master is the es- 
sential method of all secure progress, who selected a 
little company of good men, and taught them His 
spirit and His truth, and sent them out to teach 
others. God is not content to appeal to men in uni- 
versal nature, he must be embodied, he must be made 
man. And all truth must likewise have its incarna- 
tion, must enter into the heart of a man, and speak 
through his lips, and be interpreted by his life. The 
Epiphany star shines no longer in the sky : it is to be 
seen in the eyes of those who having themselves 
known Christ, help us to know Him. 

I purpose, accordingly, to examine the Magnificat 
as a revelation of her whose name is forever asso- 
ciated with it. Let us see what the hymn of the Vir- 
gin Mary shall teach us, for our good, about the 
Virgin Mary. 

The first characteristic of the holy mother which 
is suggested by these verses is indicated in the fact 
that she expressed herself in poetry. It is plain that 
she had the precious gift of a poetic nature. 

This quality of mind is not necessarily manifested 
or tested by the ability to write poetry. They who 



164 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



have this insight and appreciation may or may not 
put their thoughts in verse. The form is not essential. 
The heart of the matter is a certain fineness of tem- 
perament, and breadth of view, and perception of 
deep meanings, and appreciation of what is true and 
beautiful, and sensitiveness to all lovely influences. 
There are few who can compose poetry, but many 
poets: as there are few who can compose music, but 
very many who can enter into it with understanding 
and delight. 

It was by providential ordering, or, as we say, 
in the nature of things, that the Christian religion 
began in the East, where even by humble people life 
is regarded from the poetical point of view. Those 
lands of light and color, of fair romance, of medita- 
tion, where young men dream dreams and old men 
see visions, were the natural background for religion ; 
which does not belong, as some appear to think, with 
machinery, and mathematics, but in that higher 
sphere of thought where art and music and letters 
dwell. Holy Mary with the Magnificat upon her lips 
stands resplendent upon the threshold of Christianity, 
calling those who are like-minded to come in. 

We misread and misinterpret our religion when 
we go to its great books for devices of administrative 
polity, for directions of worship, or for serviceable 
dogmas with which we may prepare for our neigh- 
bors convenient examination papers in metaphysics. 
Matthew Arnold did us all a service when he en- 
titled his book " Literature and Dogma." The phrase 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



165 



suggests the two ways in which men read the Bible, 
as a law-book or a treatise, or as an inspired expres- 
sion of man's highest nature and God's nearest revela- 
tion. One is the way of the mechanic; the other is 
the way of the poet. 

There are great works of literary genius whose 
beauty has been destroyed for many readers by using 
them for parsing books. Genius has been degraded 
into grammar. The glowing lines have been reduced 
to datives and ablatives, to perplexities of case and 
number, and to puzzles of irregular verbs. The poet 
had no thought for things like these. He came with 
a message from the Eternal, and said to men what 
God had said to him. When religion is confused 
with archaeology, or ancient history, or distinctions 
of prepositions, or differences of manuscripts, or 
questions of external, minute detail, it is a body 
without a soul. It is a dead religion. 

In the presence of a gospel miracle, for instance, 
the prosaic mind asks immediately, How could it 
have happened ? And then ensues an endless dispu- 
tation of natural law, and the effect of the will upon 
the body, and the fallibility of historians, and the 
incompetence of observers, and the impossibility of 
this, that and the other. But they who have any 
poetic insight no more think of entering into these 
cold and dreary processes than the lover of music 
would think of employing the occasion of a sym- 
phony in counting the instruments of the orchestra, 
repeating their technical names, and calculating their 



166 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



respective values. The lover of music listens and 
is blessed. The person of poetic instinct beholds 
and worships. To him the miracle is not a problem, 
but a benediction. What does he care how it was 
done, when in it he sees and adores the graciousness, 
the might, the tenderness of the Master of his soul. 

It is perhaps impossible to put it into words. What 
I have said will seem foolish enough to the practical 
mind. Nevertheless it is true that in order to be a 
good Christian, in order to appreciate religion and 
get its fullest blessing, one must have some measure 
of the poetic temperament. They who like the holy 
mother take delight in great thoughts worthily ex- 
pressed, and are intent upon the soul of things, see 
into the heart of religion. Thus all experience of 
beauty, all sight and sound of loveliness and har- 
mony, all that enriches life, helps us to be better 
Christians, helps us to understand Christ. 

A second characteristic of the virgin mother is 
suggested by the connection between her poem and 
certain passages of the Old Testament. It is plain 
that she had the culture which comes from acquain- 
tance with the best books. 

The Magnificat is not a quotation from the Old 
Testament; it is not taken from the Song of Han- 
nah in the First Book of Samuel ; but it is intimately 
connected with those earlier scriptures, and contin- 
ually suggests that psalm of praise. It is as much 
better than the Song of Hannah as the New Testa- 
ment is better than the Old, and in much the same 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



167 



way. It is better poetry, and in a higher spirit. 
At the same time it is evident that the writer of the 
Magnificat knew large portions of the Old Testament 
by heart. 

Now, the Old Testament, to the holy mother, was 
a library of the best writings in the language of her 
race. It was for her what Plato and Aeschylus 
and Sophocles were for the Greeks ; and what Shake- 
speare and Milton, and the great historians, orators, 
preachers, dramatists and poets are for us. The 
Hebrew literature was more distinctly religious than 
that of any other people : but it was their literature, 
notwithstanding. When the Virgin Mary read it 
and re-read it, and committed it to memory, she was 
doing what we do when we learn by heart the noble 
words of our own great writers. The Virgin Mary 
was a diligent and appreciative reader of the best 
books. 

We need that enlargement of human sympathy, 
that understanding of our kind, that wide and 
high conception of society, which comes to those who 
drink out of the fountains of the great books. In 
the pictures of the Annunciation, there is commonly 
a book lying on the table; it is a symbol of this 
aspect of the character of the holy mother which is 
revealed in the Magnificat. The Lord God would 
dwell amongst us, the Father would send the Son to 
help and bless us ; to whose human keeping shall this 
divine child be entrusted ? To a maiden of the Gali- 
lean hills, who sits in her quiet room delightedly read- 



168 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



ing a great book. Let us take it as an indication of 
the divine will for us. The Eternal Father will 
charge us also with the blessed opportunities of min- 
istry upon the same conditions. Where were the 
priestly families of Jerusalem when God made His 
choice? Why did He not send the angel of His 
presence to some one nurtured in the life which 
was lived in the courts of the Temple ? Because the 
priestly families were professionalized. The Virgin 
Mary was a simple human being, living a natural 
life. The conventional religious life is in continual 
need of being humanized. We must open the win- 
dows, and let the sun shine in and the fresh breezes 
blow through. And that we do when we sit down 
with a noble book, which has not in it a syllable of 
professional religion, but which is most truly re- 
ligious because it reveals man and God. When the 
angel came, the maiden of Nazareth was not reading 
the book of Leviticus : we may be quite sure of that. 
Let us rather see the holy book laid open at the sweet 
story of Ruth, or the tender pages of the Song of 
Songs. 

A third characteristic of the holy mother is to be 
seen in the joy and confidence with which the Mag- 
nificat is filled. " My soul doth magnify the Lord, and 
my Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." 

The world in which Mary lived was a hard world : 
the circumstances did not suggest encouragement. 
Her people were in subjection to masterful and un- 
sympathetic rulers, and there was no prospect of 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



169 



change. The time when the mighty should be put 
down from their seats seemed so far away as to be 
out of reach even of prediction. As for Mary her- 
self, she was poor, and was betrothed to a carpenter 
who had nothing to give her but his heart. There 
was no likelihood that they would ever be richer. 
The personal future was filled with homely tasks 
about the kitchen and the shop, with an indefinite 
prospect of small economics. And in the immediate 
foreground was the misunderstanding and shame and 
pain to which her position inevitably destined her. 
And yet the Magnificat is jubilant with hope and 
happiness. 

Unfortunately, religion does not always bring great 
joy to the religious. It did in those early days of 
Christianity when the men and women who believed 
in Jesus were known in the streets by the new light 
which shone in their faces. But the time came when 
the religious were recognized rather by their dis- 
mal looks, and by the sepulchral note in their voices ; 
when it was considered irreverent to be merry, when 
religion like a black cloud served to shut out the sun. 
The entrance of a minister into any group of people 
stopped all cheerful conversation, and drove all smiles 
from all faces. In those days, to be a Christian was 
to forego most of the genuine and natural delights 
of life. This, however, was a misunderstanding of 
religion. It was a mistake about God. Men forgot 
for the moment, that God is our Father ; and that in 
the family of God love and happiness, music and 



170 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



dancing, and all kinds of innocent, wholesome merri- 
ment have their fit and worthy places. It was the 
elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son who 
objected to music and dancing: and he is the person 
against whom that parable was directed. 

The holy mother is the true ideal. She was filled 
with the spirit of great joy. She had pain and afflic- 
tion in her life : much of it, and very bitter : a sword 
pierced through her own soul, as Simeon in the 
temple said it would. But we may believe that this 
revelation of her nature shows us what was both true 
and abiding. We have no reason to think that from 
this beautiful serenity, from this peace and happi- 
ness, she ever departed. 

Let us resolutely disapprove ourselves, then, of the 
foolish and mischievous notion that there is any in- 
congruity between religion and natural human joy. 

I like to imagine the holy mother blessing the 
divine child with the benediction of joy, and enabling 
herself to give that blessing by living as joyous a life 
as she knows how to live, entering freely into all the 
social pleasures of her street, and coming back re- 
freshed to delight Him. That is the ministry which 
is greatly needed to-day in a world which gets very 
tired, and is subject to depression. To go out among 
one's neighbors naturally and cheerfully upon er- 
rands of that human joy which is the reflection and 
symbol of the Divine, is one of the most celestial 
missions which any woman can undertake. 

It is not eno v ugh to be good : that is the sum of the 



THE MAGNIFICAT 



171 



matter. It is not enough to have a high resolve, and 
to live a consistent and consecrated life. All this 
is excellent and essential. But we may have all this 
and make no progress whatever in the work to which 
we are devoted. That work is the extension of the 
Kingdom of God : it is the commending of the truth 
and of the life of Christ to the souls of men. 
Whether we shall do this or fail to do it depends not 
so much upon our actions or our words as upon our- 
selves who act and speak. There are excellent persons 
who make religion repulsive : there are excellent per- 
sons who make religion ridiculous. To hear the tones 
of their voice is to listen to an argument against the 
Creed and the Commandments. If to be religious is 
to be like that, then, we say, the less we have of it the 
better. 

Religion is advanced by those who are respected 
by their neighbors, for their attainments, for their 
character, for their good sense, for their wisdom, for 
their strength. It is advanced still further by those 
who are attractive to their neighbors, by their cour- 
tesy, by their sympathy, by their grace of manners, 
by their natural and joyful participation in the com- 
mon life. 

Eemember the great word of the Master's : — " For 
their sakes I sanctify Myself For their sakes, that 
I may the more passively and effectively address 
them, I enrich my life. We too must do the same. 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to 
thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. 

The scene is the temple ; the speaker is a Jew, who 
has come to attend the daily service. Simeon is a 
devout Jew, to whom God is very real and near, and 
who worships God in spirit and in truth. 

We have our opinion of the Jews who lived in 
Jerusalem in the time of Christ, and of the prayers 
which they said when they went to the temple at the 
hour of prayer. They are associated in our minds 
with all that is formal, and artificial in religion. 
But here is a good Jew, who is presently joined by 
a good Jewess, and the two go out presently to con- 
fer with a considerable company of other people, just 
and devout like themselves, looking for the consola- 
tion of Israel. So that we must amend our general- 
ization. It is true that our Lord came to His own, 
and His own received Him not: but some of them 
received Him ; more, probably, than we think. That 
great company of the priests, for example, in St. 
Stephen's day, who were obedient to the faith, — 
was theirs a sudden conversion? May it not rather 
have been the natural progress of men who all their 
lives had been devoted to the truth, and whose ritual 
acts as they offered the sacrifices were but the out- 

172 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



173 



ward sign of a sincere inward affection ? And 
Simeon, here in the temple, taking the holy child 
into his arms and blessing God in the anthem of the 
Nunc Dimittis, — may he not be the representative 
of a better J udaism than we commonly think of ? 
They were not all formalists, those ancient people ; 
they were not all hypocrites. Even the Scribes and 
Pharisees were not all hypocrites. 

Let ns rejoice to see in Simeon of the Nunc 
Dimittis the type of a fine and noble spiritual Ju- 
daism, existing then and existing now, under the 
benediction of God. And in his presence let us re- 
vise some of our sweeping judgments. 

The first good thing which I ask you to observe in 
Simeon is that he had the grace of recognition. He 
was an observant person, keeping his eyes well open, 
and looking about him as he walked. This is a re- 
markable quality in anybody, but it is especially 
notable, in one who has long passed middle life. 
Nothing is said in the narrative as to Simeon's age, 
but the tradition is that he was very old. Indeed, 
the Nunc Dimittis is the appropriate anthem of de- 
clining years. We sing it at our evening prayer, as 
the sun sets and the day is done ; it is a hymn of 
departure, anticipating peace rather than service; 
it expresses a sense of satisfaction, which belongs 
properly with age, and is the shining crown of a gray 
head, but which does not enter naturally into the 
emotions of youth. The young man has no right to 
be satisfied. It is not for him to pray that he may 



174 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



depart in peace : except as that may be a petition for 
victory over his temptations, for attainment of his 
best ideals, for peace at the last, for an old age of 
well-earned quiet. 

It is altogether likely, then, that Simeon was an 
old man. He was probably a contemporary of Anna, 
who appears with him in this scene in the temple, 
of whom it is said that she was eighty-four years old. 
That is commonly the age of retrospect rather than 
of recognition. It is the time when people look back 
and ahead, rather than round about them. But 
Simeon's eyes shine. Up he comes into the temple, 
looking attentively this way and that, greatly in- 
terested in contemporary life, an alert and observ- 
ant person, who sees everything. 

For there is this singular fact about Simeon, that 
it has been revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost 
that he shall not see death before he has seen the 
Lord's Christ. The Lord's Christ, — that is, the one 
on whom the Lord God shall pour His chrism, His 
anointing, the mark of His supreme approval, the 
symbol of the Divine Mission. Simeon had read 
about Him in the Old Testament, where His coming 
was promised, and where it was said of Him that He 
should be what is repeated in the 'Nunc Dimittis — 
a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of the 
people Israel. Simeon was waiting for Him, and 
looking for Him. Here, then, is an old man, upon 
whose soul has been impressed the assurance that he 
will look before he dies into the face of the greatest 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



175 



man of all time, into the face of the messenger of God 
who shall affect the destinies of all the race. No 
wonder that the contemporary life is very interesting 
to him. No wonder that he goes about with ob- 
servant and expectant eyes. Around any corner, he 
may come suddenly into that blessed presence. 

It is a great thing to look with that faith and glad 
anticipation into the future: to be sure that the gol- 
den age lies in that direction; to hold out hands of 
welcome and of reverence to youth. He has come, 
indeed, for whom old Simeon watched, but He said 
when He was here, As the Father hath sent me, even 
so send I you. And that sentence is of everlasting 
application. In every age they come whom Christ 
has sent to carry on His work, to lead the race to 
higher levels. Sometimes the old are unbelieving, 
and complaining and despondent, thinking that all 
the good was in the past, and accounting the world 
as destined to grow worse rather than better. Blessed 
are they who have the clear sight of Simeon, to whom 
it is revealed that they too before they die shall be- 
hold a messenger of God, and who in their old age 
are confidently expecting Him. It is the faith which 
makes the new thought welcome; which keeps Sim- 
eon reading the new books, learning the new names, 
attending to the new ideas. When Jesus came He 
offended a great many old people, because they were 
not looking for Him. They were content with what 
truth they had, and did not wish to be instructed 
further. They wanted the world to stop just there. 



176 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



Among the twelve apostles not one, so far as we 
know, was an old man. Christianity was a young 
men's movement. But Simeon, standing in the 
temple holding the child in his arms and blessing 
God, is the symbol of the past greeting the future, 
of age gladly and confidently reverencing youth, of 
the parent and of the teacher considering what part 
the child or the student may play in the unknown 
drama of another generation. 

Thus Simeon recognized Christ. His parents 
brought in the child Jesus to do for Him after the 
custom of the law; plain people in peasant dress 
belonging to the great company of those who earn 
their living by the labor of their hands; bringing 
with them the offering which was permitted to the 
poor, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. 
The crowd was great, and they mingled with it, tak- 
ing such modest place as they could get. None paid 
them attention, or observed that the child they car- 
ried was in any way different from other children. 
The legends say that a bright light shone upon His 
head. But the truth is more wonderful than that. 
Without the shining of any light, without the aid of 
any sign, Simeon saw who He was. He recognized 
Him. They all saw Him, all the crowding people, 
each intent on his own errand, passing the family 
from Bethlehem, and never looking twice. They 
saw Him: but Simeon recognized Him. At once 
there appeared that mysterious distinction which 
parts us into classes, putting poets and artists and 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



177 



inventors and men of science, prophets and philos- 
ophers, on one side, and all indifferent folk on the 
other: the distinction between those who see and 
those who perceive. It eludes all explanation. Won- 
derful it was that Simeon should have found in this 
little child the saint and hero of his dreams ; but 
only less wonderful is the discovery of a great soul, 
of a truth or of a friend, anywhere. It is the spirit- 
ual analogue of the newest of the material miracles, 
whereby without wires, across a thousand miles of 
sea or land, through storm and tempest, one electri- 
cal instrument answers instantly and accurately to 
another. The two are in accord; somehow, in the 
midst of innumerable other objects, these two are 
akin and congenial. The mysterious influence goes 
out, wave on wave, north and south and east and 
west, beating on a thousand shores, inaudible, invis- 
ible, and for the most part ineffectual; in one place 
it is perceived as intelligible speech, and is a mes- 
sage of high moment. Thus we have found our best 
friends, who understand us; thus we have come into 
possession of the truths by which we live. Thus we 
have somehow heard a voice of God : as Simeon saw 
the Son of God. The holy child is brought in, and 
the old man's heart beats with the child's heart. God 
speaks, and, if we are in spiritual accord, we hear. 

This is one of the meanings of the great word. 
The pure in heart shall see God. God does not make 
Himself uncommonly visible to them. There He is, 
to be seen by all who are able to see Him ; as the holy 



178 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



child lay in His mother's arms in the sight of all 
who looked that way. The pure in heart are able 
to see Him. That is what their purity of heart 
does for them: it clarifies their spiritual sight. 
There, where their neighbors perceive but a hill top, 
or a cloud, or an expanse of empty sea, the pure in 
heart look into the face of God. The hill is the 
mount of the transfiguration, the cloud is that which 
of old shone in the temple, and on the sea He walks 
whom the apostles saw in Galilee. Anybody might 
see God, recognize God, become conscious of the 
actual presence of God, if he did but live the kind of 
life which brings the soul into accord with God. 
Many have seen Him, and have been as sure of God 
as they are of themselves, because they have lived 
the life which leads naturally to the recognition of 
God. There is a life which will put men in accord 
with truth in science, or in music, or in art or let- 
ters. They who thus live will be sensitive and respon- 
sive to these various influences. There is likewise a 
life which leads just as naturally and just as surely, 
in and through these other lives, to the perception 
of God. Simeon had lived that life. 

He who spoke the Nunc Dimittis had the grace of 
recognition. That is the first good quality in him 
to which I would call your attention. And the 
second is like unto it : he had the sense of social re- 
lationship. His hymn of praise begins indeed, as is 
natural, with the thought of his own personal bless- 
ing : God is letting him depart in peace, with his life 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



179 



filled full of satisfaction, having seen heaven here 
on earth in the face of the holy child. But that is 
only the beginning of his thought. This benediction 
which has so marvelously come to him shall be a 
universal possession. He whom he now sees and 
recognizes shall be known of all men. He shall save 
the world. 

Simeon in the Nunc Dimittis and Mary in the 
Magnificat are thinking of the world. These hymns 
are so personal that they are warm with life; they 
come out of the hearts of human beings like our- 
selves; their poetry is in no sense academic or arti- 
ficial. At the same time they are not local. The 
words of an old man of Jerusalem, the words of a 
maiden of Nazareth, we sing to-day after all these 
miles and years, and find in them an expression of 
our own joy, our own religious emotion, and our own 
social ideals. They are contemporary. This is be- 
cause they have in them the vital elements of all 
abiding poetry: largeness of view, wideness of in- 
terest, depth of human sympathy. We are so famil- 
iar with these anthems that we easily overlook this, 
which is one of the most notable of their character- 
istics. A peasant girl at Nazareth, who is to marry 
the village carpenter, meets a crisis of her life which 
discloses to us the thoughts of her heart. What is 
she thinking about ? about the long future, whose gen- 
erations shall call her blessed; about the scattering 
of the proud, the humiliation of the mighty, the ele- 
vation of the plain people. An aged citizen of 



180 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



Jerusalem, retired from business, but still able to go 
to church, suddenly in a moment of exaltation 
speaks aloud, and we discover what he is thinking as 
he says his prayers. He is thinking of the salvation 
of his people, and of the bringing of a blessed light 
into the darkness in which the Gentiles live. That 
is, the interests of these persons are not narrow, 
not merely personal, not parochial, but national. 
They are abidingly aware that they live in a great 
world, and they are abundantly interested in it, and 
concerned about it. This young girl who lives in the 
humblest of country villages, hidden away among the 
hills of Galilee, is considering great social questions 
as she sits at the window sewing; she is disturbed 
by the distance between the poor and the rich, by 
the disproportion between the hungry and the feast- 
ers, by the domination of the Roman Empire. Away 
off there in her quiet room she ponders in her heart 
such matters as these, and meditates upon them as 
she goes gently to and fro between the kitchen and 
the village well. And this old man, who is past fight- 
ing battles, who can no longer render any active 
service, who might, — one would think— turn his 
mind with profit towards the world to come, he too 
reveals this same intense social concern, and reflects 
instantly that the blessing with which God has blessed 
him is full of large social significance. 

Thus the Nunc Dimittis, beginning as it does with 
the Lord and ending with the people, is the utterance 
of one to whom, on the one hand, the consciousness 



THE NUNC DIMITTIS 



181 



of the divine presence was so clear that being greatly 
moved he immediately addressed himself to God, and 
spoke to Him as naturally as one speaks to a com- 
panion by his side ; while, on the other hand equally 
strong and clear, he has the consciousness of society, 
the sense of a social relationship, so that when he 
thinks of God he thinks also of the great world of 
the sons of God. These two qualities have commonly 
appeared distinct, sometimes even antagonistic, one 
man dwelling in the thought of God and another 
and quite different man moving in the thought of 
society: the one contemplative, occupied with his 
prayers; the other active, busy about the worth of 
the world : one beginning the Nunc Dimittis — " Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, accord- 
ing to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salva- 
tion the other ending it — " which thou hast pre- 
pared before the face of all people, a light to lighten 
the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel " ; the 
one a saint, as we say — the other a statesman; the 
one with the prayer-book, the other with the daily 
paper. 

But the two qualities belong together. These are 
the inner and the outer aspects of the realization of 
the presence of God. He who has the grace of recog- 
nition has a devotional consciousness of God, such as 
the apostles had on the mount of the transfiguration ; 
he who has the sense of human relationship has a 
social consciousness of God, such as the same apostles 
had when they came down from the mount and met 



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THE YEAR OF GRACE 



again the crying needs of men. What we want is 
to bring them both together as Simeon did, kneeling 
down and speaking to God in our prayers, and then 
getting up and living with God in all the interests 
of the working day. We want to understand, as did 
the historians and prophets of the Old Testament, 
that religion dwells not only in the cloister but in 
the street, under the sky, and in the hearts of living 
men. We too, like Simeon, must see God in our 
national and our international politics; in the in- 
terests of what he called " Israel " and " the Gen- 
tiles/' by which we mean our own land and our 
neighbors over seas. He who perceives and wor- 
ships the eternal Father alike in the quiet of his 
own room and in the noise and hurry of the traffic 
of the town, with whom the presence of God is a 
social as well as a devotional reality, who knows what 
the apostle meant when he said, " In God we live, 
and move and have our being," — not only does he de- 
part in peace : he has a better blessing, he abides con- 
tinually in the peace which passeth understanding. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LOED'S PRAYER 



And it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place, that 
when he ceased one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach 
us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples. Luke 11 : 1. 

The answer to this request was the Lord's Prayer. 

The time and the place of the giving of the Lord's 
Prayer are both uncertain. St. Matthew says that 
it was pronounced near the beginning of our Lord's 
ministry, in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. 
St. Luke puts it near the end of his record of our 
Lord's ministry; and although he gives no other in- 
dication of the locality than to say that it was " a 
certain place/' yet the context, — being the raising 
of Lazarus, — would seem to imply the neighborhood 
of Bethany; and we know that there was a certain 
place there to which our Lord and His disciples often 
went for peace and prayer, the Garden of Gethsem- 
ane. There is a church nearby marking the tradi- 
tional spot and called the Church of the Lord's 
Prayer, having in its quadrangle the Prayer en- 
graved in many languages on marble tablets. The 
evangelists, in spite of these differences, may both 
be right. It is not impossible that the Lord gave the 
Lord's Prayer twice. 

Not only, however, do these two gospels differ as 
to the time and place of the prayer, they differ also 

183 



184 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



as to its words. St. Matthew writes, Give us this 
day our daily bread: St. Luke writes, Give us day 
by day our daily bread. In St. Matthew we read, 
Forgive us our debts; in St. Luke, Forgive us our 
sins. The fact that the phrase " day by day " is 
characteristic of St. Luke, and peculiar to him, oc- 
curring only in his writings, suggests that he made 
that change himself. It is probable, also, that he 
said, " sins 99 instead of " debts " to make the mean- 
ing plainer to the Gentiles for whom he wrote. In 
that case, the original form is that given by St. Mat- 
thew. Nobody knows, however, why St. Luke left 
three sentences out. St. Luke's Gospel, in a good 
many early manuscripts, omits the words " Who art 
in heaven and " Thy will be done on earth as it 
is in heaven and " deliver us from evil 99 . But 
this belongs to the inexplicable phenomena of omis- 
sion. Why did St. Mark and St. John omit the 
whole prayer? Why did St. Paul never once refer 
to it in any epistle? These are questions without 
answers^ Why did St. Mark and St. John leave out 
all the Christmas story? and St. Matthew, St. Mark 
and St. John make no mention of the ascension into 
heaven ? and St. John pass in silence the institution 
of the Lord's Supper? No man is wise enough to 
tell. It is not unlikely, however, that if our Lord 
gave the prayer twice He gave it in two different 
forms. We know that in His quotation of the com- 
mandments He showed no concern for verbal accu- 
racy: He did not quote them in either the order or 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 185 

the precise phrases of the Old Testament. It may 
have been His purpose to leave us free from any 
bondage to the letter, so that we might take the 
prayer and, keeping it substantially as He gave it, 
make such variations as might approve themselves to 
our souls. 

We did proceed immediately to make at least one 
such variation. We added what is called the doxol- 
ogy ; that is, the words, " For thine is the kingdom 
and the power and the glory for ever and ever." 
These words are no part of the Lord's Prayer in 
either of the gospels. It is true that they stand in 
the King James' version of the Sermon on the Mount, 
and that they were translated into that version out of 
old manuscripts; but the earliest manuscripts did 
not contain them. They were copied in out of the 
Prayer Book. That is, they first appeared in the 
service of the early church, and thence came natu- 
rally, but quite without authority, into the Bible. 

Indeed, to-day, the Lord's Prayer, as we repeat it 
in the church and in our homes, is not to be found 
either in the King James' or in the Revised Version. 
The words of the Lord's Prayer in the Prayer Book 
differ from the words of the Lord's Prayer in the 
Bible. The explanation is, of course, well known. 
The Prayer Book was translated into English in 
1549. The English Bible of that day was substan- 
tially the translation in 1535 by William Tyndale 
and Miles Coverdale. The King James' Version 
was not made till 1611. By that time, every English- 



186 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



speaking person then living had learned the Lord's 
Prayer at his mother's knee in the form which we 
still use. People were at first as unwilling to accept 
the King James' Bible as we are to accept the Ke- 
vised Version. Indeed, we have never to this day 
received the psalms of that Bible into the Prayer 
Book. And we continue to say the Lord's Prayer in 
the old way. 

Coming now from the words of the prayer to the 
meanings which are therein contained, it is plain at 
once that the prayer is in three parts. It begins 
with an Invocation : " Our Father who art in heaven." 
Then follow six petitions, and at the end, added as 
we have seen by holy men of old, is an ascription: 
" For thine is the Kingdom." I purpose now to 
consider only the Invocation. 

It concerns two persons: ourselves who pray, and 
God to whom we pray. 

The word our, with which the prayer begins, has 
in the first place a liturgical meaning. It signifies 
common prayer. It suggests a company of people 
uniting with their lips as well as with their hearts 
in the utterance of chosen words of devotion. The 
natural way to say it is in chorus. 

The persuasive argument for the use of forms of 
prayer is not based on precedent, not even on the 
precedent of the Lord's Prayer. The argument from 
precedent is a good argument. For example, the 
fact that the services of the Old Testament Church 
were ritual services, with prayers precomposed; the 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD S PRAYER 187 



fact that our Lord and His apostles took constant part 
in these services, in the temple and in the synagogue ; 
and the fact that from that time on. Christian people 
have worshiped God in the studied words of liturgies ; 
are worthy of very serious consideration, and make a 
deep impression upon the minds of those who are con- 
vinced already. But they are persuasive only in an 
intellectual way. They do not touch the natural 
prejudice of those who have heard forms degraded 
into formalism, nor do they affect a temperament 
which instinctively protests against whatever even 
appears to exalt the letter above the spirit, nor do 
they greatly appeal to those for whom an extempo- 
raneous service is hallowed by tender associations, 
who are accustomed to hear prayers in which the 
desires of the heart are spoken straight to God in the 
devout words of the moment. 

The persuasive argument for forms of prayer is 
founded not on precedent but on experience. We 
know, who use them, how year by year the services 
grow richer, charged with significance, every sen- 
tence shining like a star. We know how the theory 
that the repeated prayers must become monotonous, 
contradicts the fact. We know that they are help- 
ful, because they actually help us ; and that they are 
means of grace, because they minister to our souls. 
If the words of the extemporaneous prayers were al- 
ways worthy words, if they were always the expres- 
sion of emotion and devotion, we ourselves might 
find that the better way ; though even then the chang- 



188 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



ing words could hardly become a part of our life, 
like the words of the service pressed by continual 
repetition into our souls. But they are not always 
worthy; they are not always charged with emotion 
and devotion. Too often, they distract the minds of 
both minister and people : the minister thinking what 
he will say next, and the people wondering the same 
thing. So that men and women, more and more, are 
seeking refuge in the quiet and serenity, in the beau- 
tiful sobriety, in the constancy, of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer. When they asked Him to teach them 
to pray, the Lord who knew the heart of man gave 
them a form of words, simple and satisfying, whereby 
their prayers might be lifted out of the regions of 
individual eccentricity. The first word of the Lord's 
Prayer is the keynote of all the services; minister 
and people meeting in the spirit of this fraternal 
word, praying and praising together. 

The word our has not only a liturgical but a social 
meaning. We use it even in our most private and 
solitary devotions, uniting ourselves in spirit with 
the wide company of our brethren. Prayer is so in- 
timate and personal an act that it easily becomes 
narrow and selfish. We pray for our own selves and 
for the members of our own family : but beyond that, 
do our prayers go far? Is there in them anything 
like the general intercessions of the litany ? Do the 
concerns of the nation enter into our petitions ? or 
of the city ? or of this and that good cause ? Are our 
prayers at all determined by what we read in the 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 189 

evening paper ? That is what it means to take the 
first word of the Lord's Prayer as a pattern for all 
prayer. Down we kneel, with that word upon our 
lips, and when we truly feel what we say the walls 
of the chamber or of the church are taken away, 
and behold beside us on every hand the innumerable 
company of the faithful joining their prayers with 
ours, as we add ours to theirs, all together addressing 
the Eternal, and each in behalf of all. Give us this 
day our daily bread, — us and all who need : the poor, 
in tenement houses, who have not bread enough ; and 
the other poor, in mansions, who have material bread 
in plenty but are destitute of that which comes from 
heaven. Lead us not into temptation: us and all 
other tempted children of God, hard beset by the 
devil, in imminent peril of transgression, — help and 
protect us. Thus we pray in the social spirit of the 
Lord's Prayer. 

Having now thus considered ourselves who pray, 
the Lord's Prayer brings us to Him to whom our 
prayers are offered. We are taught to address God 
as our Father who art in heaven. 

This is the new name of God, with which Chris- 
tianity began. Moses had set about his mission in the 
strength of a new revelation of God : God, he taught, 
is Jehovah, the Eternal One. Christ entered into His 
ministry with another and higher name of God : God, 
He said, is our Eather, the considerate, the compas- 
sionate, the affectionate One. God is, indeed, called 
Father in the Old Testament; but not in this sense. 



190 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



When the prophets called God " Father they were 
thinking of His relation not to the individual but to 
the race, or to the state : he was the Father of Israel. 
J esus meant that God is our Father, yours and mine, 
so that we are the children of God, each of us a child 
of God, each of us individually important to Him, 
thought of by Him, cared for by Him. 

You see with what fitness the prayer begins with 
this name of God. For the initial approach to 
prayer is a conviction that God will hear us if we 
pray. God will indeed hear us, since He is our 
Father. The very name is an assurance of the at- 
tention of God. The next step towards prayer is 
a conviction that God is able to do what we ask. And 
that is expressed in the assertion that God is in 
heaven. That God is our Father implies His will- 
ingness to hear our prayers ; that He is in heaven im- 
plies His power to answer. 

These opening words, thus significant in their re- 
lation to the act of prayer, are significant also in 
relation to the w T hole idea of religion. 

For among religious people there have been and 
still are, two ways of feeling about God. By some, 
God is loved; by others, God is feared. These two 
feelings properly belong together, and cannot rightly 
be kept separate. They who love God without fear- 
ing Him, — as we are tempted to do in these relig- 
iously easy-going days, — fall into presumption. That 
is, they are placidly confident of their own salvation ; 
feel no urgent need of " working " it out, as the 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 191 

apostle says, — certainly not "with fear and trem- 
bling " ; and have a comfortable expectation that all 
decently respectable people will come out right at the 
last under the protection of the love of God. On the 
other hand, they who fear God without loving Him, 
— as people used to do in the days of a sterner theol- 
ogy, — or in whom the idea of God as one to be 
feared, out-balances the idea of God as one to be 
loved, fall into despair. God, they feel, is forever 
watching them, looking for their sins and finding 
them, and sure and quick to punish. Death, for 
them, is the door to a fearful judgment: hell is 
nearer than heaven. 

We ought to fear and to love God at the same time. 
Yes, I remember that " Perfect love casteth out fear," 
but not this kind of fear. Perfect love deepens the 
fear which is but another name for awe, and infinite 
reverence and adoration, and unhesitating and un- 
calculating obedience. The fear of God is the begin- 
ning of wisdom: the love of God passeth all under- 
standing. There they are in right relation. The 
fear of God is a primary lesson; that is, the deep 
sense of God as the Eternal Eight, whom every wrong 
deed and word and even thought offends. But the 
love of God is to be studied and experienced and 
appreciated and made a part of our life more and 
more, and more and more, through all eternity. And 
here they are expressed, — both of these elemental 
feelings, — in the initial words of the Lord's Prayer. 



192 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



God is our Father, and therefore to be loved ; God is 
in heaven, and therefore to be feared. 

Again, among religious people there have been and 
still are two thoughts about God. By some, He is 
thought of as near, by some, as far away. Some think 
of Him as closer to us than our hands and feet; 
others, as remote beyond the circle of the sky. But 
the Greek conception of God as near is in danger of 
a mistake as to the nature of God: God seems im- 
personal. God is in all life, the soul of all things, 
in whom, as St. Paul says, we live and move and 
have our being. But if that is so, where is He that 
we may definitely think of Him ? If God is an all- 
pervading energy, a universal influence, religion for 
most of us is hopelessly vague. On the other hand, 
the Latin conception of God as sitting on an im- 
perial throne, surrounded by a celestial court, in the 
palace of heaven, brings us into danger of a mistake 
as to God's relation to our life. God seems to touch 
our life from without and occasionally. The Divine 
is not the natural and normal fact, but is supernatural 
only and abnormal. The hand of God is chiefly seen 
in miracles, whereby he interferes with the estab- 
lished progress of events. 

The truth is that these two conceptions of God 
belong together. Neither is true without the other. 
The personality and the omnipresence of God are, in- 
deed, irreconcilable according to the narrow meas- 
ures of school logic. They belong to the high com- 
pany of the truths which are so great that nobody 



THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 193 

can see but one side at a time. For example, pre- 
destination and free-will are of this company: so are 
the humanity and divinity of Christ. Both sides are 
true. God is a personal God: the Bible says so, and 
our spiritual instincts confirm the statement. And 
God is an omnipotent God: again, the Bible and 
our spiritual instincts are at one. Sometime we 
may know how these two essential divine qualities co- 
exist in the one God. Meanwhile, our Lord sets them 
together at the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. God 
is far away : He is in heaven. But God is also close 
beside us: He is our Father. 

Thus at the very beginning of the Lord's Prayer, 
Jesus began to answer those who said, " Lord teach 
us to pray." " When ye pray, say. Our Father who 
art in heaven." In the fraternal spirit taught by the 
word our, in the filial spirit taught by the name 
Father, let us approach Him who is both near and 
far, with a perpetual fear and love. 



THE LOKD'S PEAYEK: FOR GOD'S GLORY 



Hallowed be thy name ; thy kingdom come ; thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven. 

There are six petitions in the Lord's Prayer. The 
first three are for God's glory; the other three are 
for our needs. The Lord's Prayer is in this respect 
like the Ten Commandments: it observes the same 
order of importance; it puts the same things first, 
and the same things last. First, our duty towards 
God, then our duty towards our neighbor ; first God's 
glory, then our needs, " Hallowed be thy name " is 
the initial petition ; " Give us this day our daily 
bread," comes after. 

We are all agreed that this is the true order of 
importance. First the spiritual, as St. Paul says, 
after that the physical ; heaven before earth, God be- 
fore man, the soul before the world. Who will dis- 
pute it? The theory is right, but the practice con- 
tradicts it. I mean not only such lapses from the 
ideal as are known by every one of us in our own 
private experience, but a certain secularization of 
modern life : the matter of church-going, for example, 
— or rather the lack of it, — among the privileged 
classes. 

It is true that church-going is one of the minor 
virtues, being singularly disregarded in the New 

194 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 195 

Testament ; but it is a symptomatic virtue. That is, 
it reveals by its presence or its absence among men's 
habits, certain large traits of thought, states of mind, 
relations human and divine. I would not say that 
it is an unerring symptom, making a sure and plain 
revelation of one's life. There are conceivable condi- 
tions under which one may voluntarily stay away 
from church, and yet be profoundly religious. He 
may hallow God's name, but not in our way nor with 
our conventional signs. For example, the monks, at 
the beginning of monasticism, were the most religious 
people of their day, but they had turned their backs 
not only on the world but on the church; they were 
earnest laymen who had forsaken priests and altars 
to seek God under the sky. Nevertheless, the fact 
remains, that a serene indifference to the services of 
the church indicates, in most instances, a like in- 
difference to religion. It is possible that people may 
be much interested in music without caring in the 
least for concerts. I have never met any such peo- 
ple, but they may exist. Still, in general, when the 
concert is regarded with complete indifference, and 
one never goes nor cares to go, we infer a lack of 
the love of music. If the services of the church are 
similarly disregarded, the same logic demonstrates a 
lack of the spirit of religion. 

There is at present a considerable company of 
excellent and conventionally cultivated persons who 
appear to have omitted the first petition of the Lord's 
Prayer from their scheme of life. Hot only do they 



196 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



not go to church, but it does not seem even to occur 
to them to do so. The idea of going to church on 
Sunday morning is quite as remote from their inten- 
tion as the idea of going on Sunday morning to the 
theatre. They do not think of such a thing. This 
is true not only of a good many educated men, but 
also of many women of the same social class. It is 
a phenomenon which is easily within the range of 
our own observation. It is a fact of our contem- 
porary and local life, 

I do not account it a very serious fact, except for 
the moment, and for those who are thus living a 
defective life. It has always been difficult to keep 
society in a condition of uniform development. Of 
the three parts of our natural constitution, — body, 
mind and soul, — one or other is forever lagging be- 
hind. We must expect that. That is what gives em- 
ployment to the physician, the teacher and the min- 
ister. The problem which comes in sight when we 
observe contemporary society in the light of the 
Lord's Prayer is that of a defective soul. What can 
we do about these vigorous, alert, honest, good-look- 
ing young men and women who are eager to im- 
prove their minds, but who have pale souls, shock- 
ingly under-developed, who care no more for prayer 
than the man who digs in the ditch cares for poetry ? 

I am afraid that there are no large, immediately 
effective plans which we can employ for the spiritual 
culture of these people. Often their condition is but 
a passing phase of their own life as well as of the 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 197 

life of society in general, and they will themselves 
restore the balance in due time. Just now, the so- 
cial and intellectual sides of life are naturally very 
interesting to them, absorbingly interesting, and 
everything else is temporarily crowded out. They 
will presently discover that there is a great deal else. 
Beyond the mountains there are countries also ; even 
beyond the skies. In the meantime, we may show 
in our own lives the satisfaction, the strength, the 
uplift, the benefit of religion. That is the main 
thing. The true argument for religion is its effect 
upon the life of the religious. And we may take 
pains to keep ourselves, in our turn, out of the de- 
fective classes, trying to make the most of all the 
opportunities we have. These young people will be 
influenced by those who can meet them on their own 
plan, who are socially attractive, and intellectually 
trained, informed and alert. 

Coming now from these matters, which are sug- 
gested by the mere order of the petitions, to the con- 
sideration of the petitions themselves, we see that the 
Lord's Prayer begins with a desire to realise God. 
For the " name " of God means God Himself. When 
Jacob, in his vision, wrestled with the angel and in 
the moment of his victory demanded the angel's 
name, he was not asking for any merely formal in- 
formation. The answer which he expected was not 
such as we discover in the directory. What mattered 
it to him whether the celestial visitant were called 
Gabriel or Michael ? What J acob wanted was a 



198 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



spiritual revelation: he would know this messenger 
from God as a friend knows his friend. The name 
which he sought was the secret of the other life: it 
was the spell which summons the unseen into human 
sight. That is what the name means there, and in 
other notable places in the Bible. The name of God 
is the symbol of the being and nature of God. It 
represents God Himself. He who knows any one 
of the names of God, knows God, — that far. He 
who hallows God's name perceives God and adores 
Him. He stands in awe of God. 

Thus when we pray the Lord's Prayer at the be- 
ginning of the service, we pray that we may be 
profoundly conscious of the divine presence in all that 
we say and do in church. And when we say it again 
at the end of the service, — as we do at the Holy 
Communion, — we pray that we may go out of the 
church into the street still aware of God, walking 
with God. In the English Prayer Book, the services 
are so arranged that when they are all said of a 
Sunday morning,— Morning Prayer, Litany and 
Holy Communion, — the Lord's Prayer is recited five 
times. That seems a good many times ; but it is pos- 
sible to say it all these times without vain repetition, 
filling the great phrases with new aspirations. 

These three petitions for God's glory concern two 
aspects of the religious life, which are represented by 
two words with which the service makes us familiar, 
— holiness and righteousness. " Hallowed be Thy 
name " is a prayer for holiness. " Thy Kingdom 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 199 



come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven " 
is a prayer for righteousness. That is, our life, as 
it is lived for God's glory, is a life partly of devo- 
tion and partly of action. It is like the four rivers 
which flowed out of the mystic Paradise of Eden 
at the beginning of the world. Out they flowed to the 
four corners of the earth, to water the soil, and bear 
the boats, and turn the wheels of mills; but they 
had their source in the Garden where God dwelt, 
under whose trees, in the beautiful story, God walked 
in the cool of the day. That is, we are engaged in 
manifold occupations, busy at this and at that, trying 
to bring in the kingdom of heaven and to do the will 
of God ; but at the source of all high action, the heart 
of all holy desires, all good counsels and all just 
works, is our trust in God, our reliance upon Him, 
our love for Him. First, the name of God: then, 
the will of God: holiness, — the interior life of the 
soul, and righteousness, — the interior life shining 
out in honest, helpful deeds. 

Thus " hallowed be Thy name " is the supplica- 
tion of the mystic, kneeling with hands folded, look- 
ing straight to God. We are in great need of it ill 
these hurried lives that we live. We need a larger 
measure of that habit of contemplation, that de- 
light in quiet, that capacity for silence, for the sake 
of which in the old time men cheerfully forsook the 
world. They went too far; but we hardly begin. 
One of the secrets of the spread of Christian Science 
is that these good people have revived that system 



200 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



of meditation which was so eminent a feature of 
the religious life in the middle ages, and which is 
still maintained by those who are called ritualists, 
but which is apart from common practice. I mean 
the regular setting aside of a daily space of quiet, 
when we shall simply sit still, and think, and realise 
God, and converse with Him, hallowing His name. 
This is one of several senses in which Hegel's say- 
ing is true, when he said, " Thinking is God's ser- 
vice/' This quiet thinking, the world shut out and 
heaven open, is indeed God's service. This way we 
deepen and renew the current of our spiritual life. 
Thus out of the clear springs of the still Paradise 
where we dwell with God shall flow the ministering 
rivers of our daily work. 

Holiness, however, has been made a substitute 
for righteousness. Even in the apostles' time there 
were those who prayed long prayers and rose up to 
break the commandments. So the Lord's Prayer 
proceeds immediately to the next petitions, to keep 
the balance right : " Thy kingdom come, Thy will be 
done." These petitions have to do with what is called 
the practical life, the life of beneficent action. They 
follow close upon the prayer for the life of devotion, 
as the knock at the door followed St. Peter's vision 
on the housetop. They mean, what our Lord was 
forever teaching, that religion is a matter of char- 
acter, that it is supremely concerned with good be- 
havior. And it will be noticed that while there is one 
petition for the life of holiness, there are twice as 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 201 

many for the life of righteousness : so much stress 
on prayer, twice as much on performance. And the 
performance which is here indicated is a social mat- 
ter; the Christian prays in the Lord's Prayer for 
the progress of* social betterment. 

But in this matter of social betterment there are 
two processes, — two ways of making the world bet- 
ter, — between which men commonly choose. One 
emphasizes the institution; another emphasizes the 
individual. 

Many people look for that brighter future of which 
we dream along the way of socialism or of eccle- 
siasticism. They put their confidence in the union or 
in the church. These institutions are very different 
in many respects, and even appear antagonistic the 
one to the other, but they represent to very different 
people the same thing. They are the names of two 
conceptions of the kingdom of God. They are the 
institutions from which now one and now another 
expect deliverance from all our ills. To one, the 
church is the celestial kingdom, and he prays for the 
good estate of it in the Lord's Prayer. To another 
the kingdom is the union, and in its domination he 
sees the establishment of justice, right, and the 
equality which gives to every man a chance. This 
likeness between the church and the union is much 
more close than one would at first think, and might 
be shown in several curious details. For example, 
in the similarity of the ecclesiastic and of the social- 
ist towards the outsider, — the sectarian or the non- 



202 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



union worker, — whose activity, whose very existence, 
threatens the institution. All this has frequently 
been depraved, and has been and still is the source 
of much hardness of heart; but it is a true instinct. 
The kingdom of God is the better organization of 
society in the name of God, under His laws ; and it is 
helped forward by such preliminary organizations as 
will compel progress. The individual is not suffici- 
ent for these things: he must combine with his 
neighbors, in a church. 

On the other hand, it is rightly felt that any 
wholesale dealing with humanity mistakes human 
nature. There are, indeed, large alterations of laws 
and of conditions which can be accomplished only by 
the institution ; that is, by men in combination. But 
the essential factor in reform is the individual. 
No reformation will be effective which fails to con- 
sider him. Ecclesiasticism and socialism will both 
be tragic failures unless they take the common man 
into account. Jesus met the institution with stern 
criticism when he found it working for itself and 
not for man. The sabbath, He said, — which at that 
moment was the symbol of the institutional idea, — 
the Sabbath is for man. The union is for man, the 
church is for man: not man for the union or the 
church. The kingdom of God is for man. Its true 
purpose is not to build palaces and treasure houses 
and walls, and to become rich and great, but to care 
for and protect and help and better every man. Ac- 
cordingly, the Lord's Prayer does not pause at the 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 203 

institutional petition, " Thy kingdom come/' but 
goes on at once to the individual petitions, " Thy 
will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Therein 
we pray that every one of us, — our own selves first, 
— standing each alone in the divine presence, may 
obey God. That is the foundation of all stable so- 
ciety. Christ was neither socialist nor individualist : 
he was neither churchman nor dissenter : he was both 
in one. And He set these two great social principles 
side by side in complete harmony in the Lord's 
Prayer, that He might help us to hold aright the 
balance of our life. 

" Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
Thus we pass from these large exterior matters to 
the more intimate concerns of our own life. For, 
after all, the best service which most of us can ren- 
der to society is to live our own life honestly and 
well. He who minds his own business, and gives no 
occasion of anxiety or complaint on his account, is a 
good social servant. We serve God and society by 
doing our daily tasks as well as we know how. The 
example which our Lord sets seems at first impos- 
sible to imitate, since we know nothing whatever 
about the obedience of heaven. Who can tell how 
God's will is done in heaven? But it is plain that 
Jesus is speaking here, as He often spoke, in the 
language of imagination. What He means is that 
we are to obey God ideally. That is, the finest obe- 
dience which we can conceive of is as near as we can 



204 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



get to the obedience of heaven: and we are to obey 
God that way. 

When Isaiah looked into heaven, he noticed that 
some of the citizens of the celestial country had six 
wings: with twain they covered their face, and with 
twain they covered their feet, and with twain they 
did fly. We may perhaps find in these mystical per- 
sons some suggestions as to the ideal of obedience. 
With twain they covered their face. That means 
submission. The face is covered, the eyes are shut, 
and, asking not to see, the faithful servant bows be- 
fore the will of God. This is what the prayer means 
when it is prayed by sick beds, and in the darkened 
rooms where grief sits, and in the presence of dis- 
tress. Thy will be done, we cry, with the submis- 
sion of our soul. All is blank and black about us; 
why this heavy burden of calamity has fallen upon 
us we know not, nor can we know; but thou art 
God, thou knowest. Somehow it is thy will. We 
cover our face and go to meet whatever comes. 
" Born into life," as Empedocles sings on Etna in 
Arnold's poem — born into life are we, and so beset 
with conditions imperfectly understood; born into 
life, into a life where pain and grief and death are 
inevitable facts; here we bow down, with face cov- 
ered, accepting the conditions, submissive to the in- 
scrutable will of the Eternal. 

And with twain they covered their feet. Let us 
interpret this as self-effacement. The mystical wings, 
the symbols of obedience, hide the whole body. The 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR GOD'S GLORY 205 



servant of God considers not himself. When the 
will of God is known, on he goes to do it, no matter 
at what cost. This is the other side of submission: 
that is passive in the presence of the difficult, this is 
active. Many things are confused and perplexed, 
one thing is plain: to do right is imperatively right. 
Thus have men given up all that society holds dear, 
for Christ's sake, following the path of obedience, 
even as he followed it, to the death upon the cross. 

And with twain they did fly. This shall signify 
glad fulfilment of the divine will in all our com- 
mon life. The wings are spread, the secret of aerial 
flight is learned, and forth goes the obedient soul, 
glad as a bird. 

It is for this obedience we pray in the Lord's 
Prayer as the new day begins: that we may have 
grace to bear whatever ills may this day await us, 
and to make whatever sacrifices may this day be 
demanded of us by the voice of God, and to live 
in the free loyalty of that blessed service which is 
perfect liberty, doing the will of God as it is done 
in heaven. And when the day is ended, we kneel 
again praying the same prayer, committing our souls 
and bodies, and all our interests, ourselves and our 
friends, to the divine ordering, to our heavenly 
Father's keeping. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER: FOR OUR NEEDS 



Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tres- 
passes, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

These three petitions concern the present, the 
past and the future. We ask God to meet our pres- 
ent needs, to forgive our past sins, and to deliver us 
from future ills. 

The first petition contains the only adjective in 
the whole prayer: we desire our daily bread. No- 
body knows exactly what this adjective means, for 
the word had never before been used. Of course, 
the original words are all unknown. The first form 
in which the Lord's Prayer appears is in the Greek 
of the gospels ; but the Lord did not pray in Greek. 
His speech was Aramaic, and from this the Lord's 
Prayer, like everything else which he said, was trans- 
lated. The strange word comes from the translation. 
And there it stands absolutely alone. No other 
Greek writing, so far as is now known, contains it. 
So that there is nothing with which we can compare 
it. There is, accordingly, and has been from very 
early times, a difference of opinion as to its mean- 
ing: some holding that it is an adjective of quality, 
others that it is an adjective of time. Thus some 
would have it signify " constant " ; Give us this day 

206 



THE LORD S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 207 

our constant bread, the abiding, the eternal bread, 
the bread of the altar, the bread of life. While 
others would have it signify " continual " ; Give us 
day by day our continual bread, our bread contin- 
ually; the plain, material loaf of the table without 
fail, every morning. 

It is not likely that we will ever know with cer- 
tainty whether the Lord was thinking of the soul 
or of the body. We remember, on the one hand, 
that He told us not to think much about what we 
shall eat; and we know that He spoke of bread as 
a symbol of spiritual nourishment. We remember 
on the other hand, that He entered naturally into all 
our life, that He said of Himself that He came eat- 
ing and drinking. One of the most affecting in- 
cidents in all the descriptions of His great miracles 
is the word which He said when the little daughter 
of Jairus came back to life. The eyes, closed as it 
seemed for the long sleep, gently opened; the child 
moved: life conquered death; and all who stood by 
were astonished with a great astonishment ; then the 
Master " commanded that something should be given 
her to eat." 

Let us say that the Lord meant all that the words 
can mean. He meant the bread which comes down 
from heaven, and the bread which grows up out of 
the earth. He meant the whole life which we live, 
that we might be surrounded on all sides with bless- 
ings. When we pray this prayer, we ask God to take 
care of us, completely, providing for all our necessi- 



208 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



ties, material and spiritual. The words are an appeal 
to the providence of God. " I pray unto God," as 
the Catechism says, " that He will send us all things 
that are needful both for our souls and bodies." 

Give us this day our daily bread : supply our com- 
mon appetites, give us our three meals, grant us good 
health, and strength sufficient for our daily work; 
thou hast endowed us with human desires, grant 
that we may gratify them, in thy name and for our 
good ; fill us with the benediction of the common life. 
And all this with simplicity, with fraternity, and 
without anxiety: — with simplicity, since all that 
we ask is bread, the supply of our plain needs ; with 
fraternity, for we come not alone, we ask not for 
" my " bread but for " our " bread, for the com- 
mon bread, that none may be in want; and without 
anxiety, for we ask only for the bread of the present 
day, casting our care on Him who cares for us. 

Give us also the daily bread of the mind and of 
the soul. Help us to think clearly, bless us with 
books and in the reading of them, put us in the way 
which leads to truth, grant us all spiritual opportu- 
nities and the grace to use them, surround us with 
elevating influences. Make us to grow this day in 
the knowledge and the love of God; and keep us in 
harmony with the invisible environment. 

This petition is to be recited day by day. The 
phrase implies the continual repetition of prayer: 
not because prayer is for the information of God, 
— He knows our necessities before we ask; nor be- 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 



209 



cause prayer assists the memory of God, as if He 
would forget about us unless we continually present 
ourselves before Him and tell Him the details of our 
needs, — God will not forget. No; prayer is to be 
prayed, and prayed again, over and over all the days 
of our life, because it is the expression of our con- 
sciousness of God and of our sense of dependence 
upon Him, and because this act of expression helps 
to keep this consciousness clear and to deepen this 
sense of dependence. Day by day, we ask God to 
give us our daily bread, not because we imagine that 
He will therefore feed us without our exertion, but 
because we thereby daily remind ourselves that it 
is in Him that we live, that our life came from Him 
and is sustained by Him and will return to Him. 

This is not, of course, the whole of the idea of 
prayer. It has its objective as well as its subjective 
side. We pray that God may answer us. We come 
to Him with the deep longings of our nature, with 
the strong desires which are prompted by our ex- 
perience, and ask Him to do this or that definite 
thing. And for this kind of prayer, we have abun- 
dant warrant in our Lord's own words. But here in 
the Lord's Prayer, as we commonly pray it, in the 
days when life goes quietly, the prayer is mainly for 
the sake of an answer in our own souls. It is an- 
swered when it produces in us that relation to God 
which the words imply. This aspect of prayer is 
made quite plain in the petition in the Litany where 
we pray God to keep and govern the holy church 



210 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



universal in the right way. We do not imagine for 
a moment that unless we diligently pray this prayer, 
God will fail to govern the church in the right way. 
We are expressing our trust in His wise gover- 
nance. We are saying in a petitional way, in the 
phrases of prayer, what we say in a poetical way in 
the words of the psalm : " The hills stand about 
Jerusalem, even so standeth the Lord round about 
His people." The true answer to our prayer is an 
increase of our trust in God. Thus in the Lord's 
Prayer we converse with God, we say to Him that 
we commend ourselves and all our interests to His 
providence, we remind ourselves that He is the giver 
of every good and perfect gift, we renew in our 
souls the sense of the divine presence, and of the 
divine protection. Our daily bread — thou alone canst 
give it in whom we live, and have our being. 

The next petition of the Lord's Prayer looks to- 
wards the past, though it comes back immediately 
into the practical present. We have prayed that 
God will give us our daily bread: now we begin 
to consider whether we are worthy of it. Thus and 
thus we ask of God: what does He ask of us? and 
how do we do it ? We are confronted by our sins. 
Then the petition for forgiveness follows naturally. 

Accordingly, sin is considered in the Lord's 
Prayer in its relation to God. The thought is that 
of the prodigal son, who says, remembering his 
" riotous living ", " I have sinned against heaven." 
He had sinned against his father and his neighbor, 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 211 

and against himself, but the first confession speaks of 
heaven. Sin has commonly a threefold consequence: 
it injures our own life, it harms others, and it 
offends God. When we pray for forgiveness, we 
may indeed desire earnestly that both we and our 
neighbor shall be as though we had not sinned; but 
we know, when we consider the matter, that that 
desire is almost beyond the possibility of fulfilment. 
It may, indeed, come about, through the providence of 
God, that we shall learn such a lesson from our sin 
as shall make us better ever after. It may happen 
that our neighbor is helped rather than hurt ; though 
this is much less likely. But the sin has been com- 
mitted, and its consequences go on growing into 
their proper fruit. What is possible, and in the 
highest degree desirable, is that we should come again 
into a right relation with God. That is effected by 
true repentance, so that we are actually of another 
mind from that in which we committed our trans- 
gressions. That other mind is what God wants. 
When He recognizes us, in this bettered form, and 
accepts our repentance, His act is called forgiveness. 

Thus it appears that God's forgiveness is a con- 
ditional matter. When we ask Him to forgive us, 
as we do in this prayer, we include the condition. 
We do not say, " Forgive us our trespasses/' and 
there stop ; we say " Forgive us our trespasses as 
we forgive those who trespass against us " ; that is, 
according to our fulfilment of the conditions. The 
duty of forgiveness, the performance of which on 



212 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



our part is thus declared to be essential if we would 
be forgiven, is beset with many and grievous diffi- 
culties; but some of them are cleared away when 
this conditional aspect of forgiveness is kept in mind. 
For example, we will not ask how can we forgive one 
who has wilfully injured us, and who cheerfully 
persists in his purpose to injure us again if he gets 
a chance? We are not expected to forgive him: he 
has not fulfilled the necessary conditions. 

In the Old Testament the word which is trans- 
lated forgiveness sometimes means to cover. He 
forgives who covers his neighbor's offences, so that 
he does not look at them nor think of them. This is 
the forgiveness of our Lord upon the cross : " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." It 
applies to such injuries as are committed in honest 
ignorance. 

In the New Testament the word which is trans- 
lated forgiveness sometimes means to be gracious. 
The gracious person overlooks offences, as one of 
high position and large mind overlooks certain un- 
pleasantnesses of his simpler neighbors, making large 
allowance for their lack of opportunity. Also, the 
gracious person, no matter how grievous the offence, 
or how impossible it is to forget it, ministers in- 
stantly and with all tenderness to the offender whom 
he finds in a condition of distress. The classic 
instance is the Good Samaritan. The precept which 
sets forth this kind of forgiveness is the beatitude, 
" Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 



213 



mercy." It is taught also in the saying, " Render 
to no man evil for evil, but contrariwise blessing." 

Commonly, however, both in the Old Testament 
and in the New, the word for forgiveness means to 
send away. Our sins stand between us and God, and 
God sends them away. Or, when it is our forgiveness 
of our neighbor which we are considering, his sins 
stand between us and him, hindering our friendly 
intercourse, making a sincere friendship impossible; 
and we dismiss them. 

It is continually implied, however, both in the 
Lord's Prayer and elsewhere, that this dismissal can 
be effected only by joint agreement. God is ready 
to forgive, but we must do our part. God will say 
H Go " to our transgressions ; but not a step will they 
stir till we say " Go ", too. That is, we must first 
hate our sins. They will stay where they are, shut- 
ting the way between God and our soul, just so long 
as they receive the least encouragement. When we 
honestly and thoroughly detest their company, they 
will depart. In order, then, that we may be for- 
given by God we must be truly sorry, truly repent- 
ant, and truly resolved upon amendment. 

And what is required of us in our relation to God 
is required also of our neighbor in his relation to 
us. Forgiveness is no more one-sided here than it 
is in heaven. He who has offended us must desire 
to be forgiven: he must be sorry: he must try to 
make amendment. Then, when we receive him, 
believing that he has truly repented, we meet the 



214 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



conditions of the Lord's Prayer. We deal with him 
as we desire that God, under like circumstances, 
shall deal with us. Christian forgiveness is not 
weak amiability. It means a large mind, which 
covers the sins of ignorance with the mantle of char- 
ity. It means a merciful heart, which impels us to 
be gracious to our enemies, even when we can no 
further forgive them. And it means a loving spirit, 
which will receive even our enemy when he comes 
in honest sorrow for his offences, and will forgive 
him even as we hope to be forgiven. 

The last petition in the Lord's Prayer is against 
temptation and the power of evil. For when we 
reflect upon our trespasses, and see how many they 
are, and thus realize how many times we have failed 
in our encounter with temptation, we are afraid. 
We ask God to protect us from the dangers of the 
future. 

It is true that St. James, in his Epistle, advises us 
to count it all joy when we fall into divers tempta- 
tions. But that is the counsel of a competent saint, 
speaking out of the midst of his own victorious ex- 
perience. St. James was so good a man that they 
called him " the just But it is possible that in 
this matter his very goodness prevented him from 
fully understanding how hard it is for most people 
to be good. He was a spiritual athlete, accustomed 
to the most vigorous spiritual exercises. Tempta- 
tion was his long run, and his high leap, and the 
heavy shot which he hurled to an unmatched dis- 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 215 

tance. He enjoyed it. But when he recommends it 
to us, we have to shake our heads, like a man of a 
sedentary habit who is asked to take part in a race. 
We are not equal to these strenuous pastimes. When, 
indeed, we do fall into divers temptations, then, God 
enabling us ; we will deal with them like men, and 
make the most of the hard situation. We will try 
then to appreciate the fact that temptation is our 
opportunity: an opportunity to increase by exercise 
in spiritual strength. But we cannot go to meet it, 
as St. James did: unless we are militant and sturdy 
persons, like St. James, delighting to fight even with 
the devil. 

It is one of the evidences of our Lord's perfect 
human sympathy, of His intimate understanding of 
us men, that He makes His prayer on a level with 
our weakness. The Lord's Prayer is a good prayer 
for a saint ; but it is also a good prayer for a sinner. 
When the Master comes to the matter of temptation, 
He lets us speak out of the natural timidity of our 
heart. This is the voice of humanity, conscious of 
infirmity, dreading to fail, in sore fear of Satan. 

Lead us not into temptation. The day begins, its 
hours stretching before us like a path: an unknown 
path on which no man has ever walked, and yet pretty 
sure to be a good deal like that over which we came 
yesterday. And that was ambushed in twenty 
places by the devil, and we were defeated fifteen 
times — perhaps twenty times. Now we set out again. 
O heavenly Father, guide us and guard us, suffer 



216 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



us not to be tempted beyond the narrow limits of our 
strength, and if we must encounter temptation, lead 
us out in safety ! And deliver us from evil. 

There is one thing which God will not do : He will 
not contradict the universal laws of nature. We call 
them laws of nature, but they are customs of God: 
that is, thus and thus does God deal with the world. 
Water drowns and fire burns. And this happens al- 
ways, because God in His infinite wisdom sees that 
this is best for us. The invariability of the divine 
customs, or as we say, of the natural laws, is the 
ground of human reason. It enables us to think in- 
telligently. A world in which water should drown 
only on Sundays and saints days, and which should 
always be safe for trains going to ecclesiastical con- 
ventions but dangerous for trains going to political 
conventions, would be a world in which science would 
be impossible, in which preference would take the 
place of order, in which material rewards would be 
given for spiritual virtues. In such a world reason 
would be impossible. 

There is also another thing which God will not do : 
He will not intervene between our carelessness and 
its consequences. If He did, we would be like chil- 
dren who are never allowed to be left for a moment 
without a nurse. Tragedies would indeed be averted, 
but at the cost of the degeneration of the whole race. 
We would live sheltered lives, but we would hardly 
be worth sheltering. All strength of will, foresight, 
self-reliance, human progress by the conquest of diffi- 



THE LORD'S PRAYER : FOR OUR NEEDS 217 

culty, all that most distinguishes the highest type of 
man would perish. No matter how corrupt the gov- 
ernment of a city, nothing would happen to bring it 
to the attention of the people. No matter how flag- 
rant our disobedience of the laws of health, we would 
be protected from all bad results. There was a time 
when every city street was filthy: that was changed 
by the plague. Year after year the plague came, till 
men learned the lesson. Better a hundred plagues, 
than a race of men nursed out of all energy of reform. 
Better a steamboat disaster, or a theatre fire, or the 
tragadies of a great battle, or any other dire conse- 
quences of carelessness or sin, than the destruction of 
manhood, the degeneration of character, the loss of 
the noblest human qualities. 

The truth is that God knows what is best for us 
always: and always does it, though sometimes it 
hurts. The Christian religion begins with the trag- 
edy of the cross, and is founded on centuries of 
martyrdom. We pray to be delivered from evil, but 
always in the spirit of Him who added, " not my will 
but thine be done." Deliver us from evil, but not by 
contradiction of the great, beneficient, necessary laws ; 
and not by shielding us from the fair consequences 
of human carelessness. We must take the bad with 
the good, praying that by the grace of God there shall 
be more good than bad. 

Indeed, the prayer, as our God gave it had refer- 
ence to spiritual rather than to physical evil. 

The evil, against which we pray at the end of the 



218 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



prayer, is every ill which may beset us, but especially 
the kind of ill which comes in the train of victorious 
temptation. For it is likely that the word which 
we translate " evil " means " the evil one." This 
shall not draw us into any discussion of the person- 
ality of the devil. It is sufficient for our practical 
purpose that we see in it a sign of a deep sense of 
sin. Evil, to our Lord, was no abstract, academic 
matter, belonging to the department of philosophy or 
of ethics. It was an active, immediate, vital, ag- 
gressive force in the world, alive, hostile and ter- 
rible, like a personal enemy. He continually spoke 
of it as a personal enemy. He taught us to pray 
to be delivered from it, as we would be delivered from 
an armed man, waiting for us at night, around a 
black corner. 

Thus it was by a natural sequence of thought that 
good men of old, when they said the Lord's Prayer, 
added here that solemn recognition of the might of 
God which fills its final words. We are indeed weak, 
and the devil is strong, but thou art stronger. We 
shrink from the hard test of temptation, and are 
afraid of the hand of evil, but thine is the victory, 
now and evermore. We can dare all things, we can 
do all things, we can live our life as sons of God, if 
thou wilt strengthen us. For thine is the kingdom 
and the power and the glory, forever and ever. 
Amen. 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



"And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be 
saved." Acts 2: 47. 

They stood upon the threshold of a new life. The 
comparison between them and the young men and wo- 
men of an academic town is obvious. Their faces 
were toward the future. They were intent upon suc- 
cess. It is true that they did not express their inten- 
tion in that word. They stated it in the phrase of the 
church rather than in the phrase of the college. 
What we call success, they called salvation. " What 
shall we do/' they said, " to be saved ? " But the 
difference is chiefly in the expression. They had in 
their minds the same high ambition which impels 
the student. They wanted to succeed. For to be 
saved is to succeed supremely. 

It is true that success commonly suggests some- 
thing secular ; we call a man successful if he gets on 
well in his business. And salvation, in common 
speech, suggests something spiritual; the saved man 
is he who is sure of going to Heaven when he dies. 
But neither of these definitions is sufficient. Salva- 
tion properly understood is spiritual soundness. It 
means sanity and strength; it is the good health of 
the whole man, and it has to do with the present 
life. We are saved when we are delivered from our 

219 



220 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



sins and are strong in conflict with temptation, and 
are open and receptive to all high influences, and live 
the life which befits a son of God. To be saved is 
not to be admitted through a gate into a garden, and 
thenceforth to look out between the palings at the 
dusty road, thankful that we are within, under the 
shade of the trees. The essential thing is not where 
we are, but what we are. The heart of salvation is 
not a better place, but a better man. 

And that, you see, is the definition of all good 
success. That is what we want. The supreme am- 
bition which we have is to be a man, a sturdy, 
straightforward, erect, clear-eyed, right-minded man. 
To be less than this is to fail miserably. It is to be- 
long to the defective classes. Blind Tom, for ex- 
ample, was an extraordinary musician, but he was not 
a man, in any large sense ; he was an idiot. In the 
same way, one may be a capital workman, scholar, 
architect, administrator and yet not be a man. He 
may be defective in mind or in morals ; he may be a 
machine or an animal. The essential quality of man- 
hood is character. And to attain character is at the 
same time to succeed and to be saved. Here the two 
meet. Without character, there can be neither suc- 
cess nor salvation. 

There they stood, then, in the presence of the 
preacher. And it was with them as it is with the 
serious student in the lecture room of the competent 
teacher. Coming for information, they got that and 
inspiration also. They were profoundly moved. 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



221 



They were stirred with a strong sense of discontent 
with themselves, and were pressing forward into a 
new and different and better way of living. Behind 
them lay the past, a time of preparation and oppor- 
tunity; on they moved with high resolve, into the 
future. " What shall we do ? " they said, asking 
the universal question of crisis and transition and 
of growth. " What shall we do to be saved ? " 
" What shall we do that we may live aright, that we 
may draw closer to the ideal, that we may more ef- 
fectively serve our fellow-men and please God ? " 
" What shall we do to succeed ? " " What shall we 
do to make the most of life ? " 

What did they do ? We read that the apostles 
told them to ally themselves with the Christian So- 
ciety, and that they did it. They were added to the 
church. The Lord added to the church daily such 
as desired to be saved. The men were taught that if 
they wished to succeed, if they wished to grow in 
strength of character and in the spirit of service, if 
they wished to be saved, they must be socially 
minded; they must take their place in the new fra- 
ternity of the brethren of the ideal life. 

That is the lesson which I would bring out of that 
old time into this present. Let me state it with all 
plainness and frankness. There are many things 
which we desire of you, but the one of which I pro- 
pose to speak is this : We ask you men and women, 
for your own sake and for the general good, to estab- 



222 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



lish and maintain a close connection with the Chris- 
tian church. 

It is evident that we live in an individualistic 
generation. We are still feeling the force of that 
tremendous reaction against institutions, which came 
to a crisis in the Eeformation. It affects church at- 
tendance. There was a time when men felt to the 
full the importance of the corporate religious life. 
It was a necessity with them to be in relation with 
the institutions of religion. To be excommunicated, 
and thus cut off from the social and spiritual priv- 
ileges of the church, was the most dreaded of all 
punishments, and men were willing to undergo hum- 
iliation and hardship to escape it. To-day, there are 
considerable numbers of respectable people who very 
cheerfully excommunicate themselves. 

The long corridored porch such as opens into the 
church of St. Ambrose at Milan was lined of a Sun- 
day morning in the early centuries with suppliants 
stretching out their hands to those who entered, beg- 
ging for their prayers. Those people, for their sins, 
had been forbidden to go to church, and there they 
were in the vestibule as near as they were permitted 
to approach, imploring all good, christian persons 
within reach to get that awful sentence lifted, and 
thus to enable them to kneel again in the congrega- 
tion of the faithful. We may read there as on a 
map, the continental distance between that day and 
ours. 

It is true indeed, that the institution came to be 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



223 



inordinately emphasized. That is what the Latins 
did, who had a genius for administration and made 
the most of it. The church was so exalted into undue 
importance that it became a hindrance to society. It 
was tacitly agreed that so long as one was a loyal 
son and supporter of the church, holding the ortho- 
dox faith, and presenting himself punctually in the 
attitude of devotion at the church service, his moral 
irregularities should not be held too strenuously 
against him. It seems, sometimes, to have been con- 
sidered worse to break the canon law of the church 
than to disobey the moral law of God. The thunder- 
bolts of pontifical justice were hurled at the heads of 
ecclesiastical rather than that of ethical offenders. 

This was an evident abuse and a natural reaction 
followed. The first was made last; the church was 
set at naught. At first it was the ancient church 
whose claims were rejected, while the new societies 
transferred each to its own allegiance the old stout 
hold of the institution upon the worshipper. The 
New England Puritan had his opinions, which 
amounted to sturdy convictions, on the subject of at- 
tendance at meetings, and enforced these by the aid 
of the tithing man. Everybody had to go to church. 
But these convictions could not forever withstand the 
logical consequences of individualism. If it is right 
for a company of persons to separate themselves from 
the church in which they have been nurtured, it is 
right for the individual to do the same. We see that 
plainly, nowadays, and are acting upon it, Thu^ 



224 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the individual man, discovered by society and by 
himself, was brought into the foreground of religion. 
His personal liberty was asserted and defended. The 
man must stand alone with God and answer for 
himself. Out of the ancients books and formularies 
and institutions of religion, he may choose that which 
he finds to be congenial with his needs, and the rest 
may go. If none of them help him much, they may 
all go, and good riddance. 

This led inevitably to the custom of voluntary at- 
tendance at prayer, which is now securely established 
in almost all the churches. Attendance used to be as 
compulsory in the church as it is in most of the col- 
leges. When the tithing man was discharged, public 
opinion took his place. Then, towns grew into cities, 
and public opinion lost its old authority in the new 
communities, where next neighbors did not know 
each other's names. At the same time, the churches 
were divided into so many competing sects that the 
christian religion, on its institutional side, lost the 
respect of many thoughtful and peaceful people. 
Moreover, in the change out of the middle ages into 
the era of the Reformation, the service was minimized 
and sermon was magnified. The service was the voice 
of the praying church. It was ineffably calm, serene 
and confident, loftily conventional and impersonal. 
It was like the music to which it was sung. That 
music, says Professor Dickinson, in his admirable 
account of the mediaeval Mass, was " elevated, vague, 
abstract; it was as though it took up into itself all 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



225 



the particular and temporary emotions that might be 
called forth by the sacred history and articles of be- 
lief and sifted and refined them into a generalized 
type, special individual experience being dissolved in 
the more diffused sense of awe and rapture which 
fills the heart of an assembly in the attitude of wor- 
ship." It was the word of prayer which this music 
uttered, and that did not satisfy the modern spirit. 
Men wanted a more individual appeal. The long 
monotones of the old service were exasperatingly 
monotonous to the new congregation. They desired 
variety and personality. They craved an expression 
of the thoughts of their own hearts and an interpre- 
tation of the experiences of their own lives. They 
wished to be addressed not as the assembly of the 
faithful intent upon eternity, but as individual men 
and women, contending with present temptation, tre- 
mendously interested in this present life. And they 
got what they wanted in the sermon and in the ex- 
temporaneous prayers which preceded and followed 
it. They felt that the main purpose of church going 
was to hear somebody preach. Then books and 
newspapers became so cheap and numerous and ser- 
mons became so uninteresting in comparison, that an 
increasing number of persons felt that their homes 
were more pleasant and profitable places of a Sunday 
than the church. This is the situation which awaits 
young people as they come out of the college into the 
world of things as they are. They find themselves in 
a society which is still strongly individualistic, where 



226 



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the initial example of congregations separating from 
the ancient church is diligently followed by men and 
women separating from the modern congregation and 
where the exaltation of personal preaching above com- 
mon prayer makes such separation natural. Against 
this situation, I ask you to set yourselves in stout 
array, and this for two reasons, for your own sake 
and for the sake of the community. 

Your need of the church for your own sake is il- 
lustrated by divers analogies. The artist seeks the 
society of those who are in sympathy with his art. 
He improves his artistic opportunities. When he 
hears of a good picture, he goes to see it. So far a$ 
he is able, he surrounds himself with such an environ- 
ment of form and color as will enrich his taste. 
He reads such books as will aid him in discrimina- 
tion, in appreciation, in the growth of his character 
as an artist. He keeps himself in relation with the 
corporate life of the world of art. 

The same is true of the musician. He is on the 
alert to hear the best music. He belongs to musical 
societies and institutions. He knows very well that 
if he were to sit apart in his own room and try to be 
a musician without regard to his fellows, he would 
make a failure of his life. Commonly, his gifts are 
of little value except in combination with others. 
And always, what he wants is to be in harmony with 
that spirit of music which has delighted and blessed 
the sons of men since the opening chorus of the 
morning stars. 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



227 



The student, too, would be a member of the con- 
fraternity of letters. He seeks the company of those 
who are studying his subjects, that he may get the 
inspiration which comes from conferring with those 
who are like minded with himself. He desires, in- 
deed, to do his own work, to think his own thoughts 
and express them in his own way, but he knows that 
this is best attained by coming into relation with 
his fellow-students and entering into such associations 
as will stimulate his mind and his will. It is true 
that the earnest student will increase in wisdom no 
matter where he is ; though he live among those who 
account all labor of the schools to be but idleness and 
folly, and who value only such learning as is garnered 
in the plowed fields. The pine knot has lighted men 
as steadily along the way of scholarship as all the 
bright lamps of the muses. But put the solitary stu- 
dent within reach of sympathy and understanding, 
let him live where men are measured not by the 
stoutness of their arms but by the fineness of their 
minds, will it not make a difference with him? It 
will deepen and widen all currents of his intellectual 
being. The stream which trickled scantily between 
the stones will be at flood tide, filling the space from 
bank to bank. 

That is what I mean by the help that comes to the 
individual from his relation to the institutions of re- 
ligion. That is the difference between the good man 
who never goes to church, and the good man who 
never fails to go. That is what happens when one 



228 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



who has been living his religious life alone comes 
out and associates himself with his religious neigh- 
bors. He fortifies and multiplies all that is religious 
in him. The new life ministers to his spiritual needs. 
That which is defective in him, he perceives and 
amends; that which is weak, he strengthens; that 
which is narrow, he broadens out to meet the true 
horizon. He lives the life which is natural to man, 
and spiritual health goes along with it. He does 
what God would have him do, and is blessed ac- 
cordingly. 

I know that there are exceptions. There are those 
within the church in whose lives the deed belies the 
creed. The church can save no man. After all is 
said, the outcome depends upon the man. And there 
are those without the church, invincible individual- 
ists, natural mystics, who with no aid from sermon 
or sacrament live the life of the spirit. The hermits 
and the early monks accomplished it. St. Benedict, 
who, more than any other man, has shaped the de- 
votional life of modern churchmen, was a non-church- 
goer. He was a saint who never went to church. 
He was a man of God who sought God in the sanc- 
tuaries of the woods and hills, rather than in temples 
made with hands. 

Nevertheless, the man who stays at home on Sun- 
day misses something. He may spend the time with 
profit. He may read a helpful book, or take a walk 
into the country; he may, in his own fashion, get 
good out of the good day. But he misses something. 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



229 



He misses that indefinable influence and uplift which 
comes from human association. The monks found 
that out, and assembled in communities and were 
ordained priests. They returned to the institutions 
of religion which they had deserted in their first 
enthusiasm. They felt the need of the church. The 
building may not be a very large building; the ser- 
vice may not be a very fine service ; the congregation 
may be uncongenial and the hearer may disagree with 
the preacher ; yet, to him who worships there aright, 
the truth of the Master's saying is made manifest, 
— " Where two or three are gathered in my name 
there am I in the midst of them." The man who 
goes to church finds that out, and knows that that 
promise is fulfilled. There in the still sanctuary, 
kneeling side by side with others who are seeking 
God, the competitions and anxieties of the common 
life shut out, the soul sees heaven open. 

It is characteristic, too, of human nature that it 
needs times and seasons and appointed places. That 
which is best in us waits for suggestions from with- 
out. So that he who says, " I can shape my char- 
acter outside the church as well as in; I can min- 
ister by myself in my own way to my own life," is 
altogether likely, after the first enthusiasm, to find 
himself neglecting that which he honestly intended 
to perform. Solitude is excellent for an hour or 
a day, but it is not the normal state of human beings. 
All experience shows that we are made for society. 
Thoreau spent but a year in his seclusion at Walden 



230 



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Pond. The hermits stayed longer, and fared worse. 
It is hard enough under the best conditions to live 
the life which is appropriate to a member of the 
family of God. He who tries to live it apart from 
the rest of the family adds to the difficulties, of which 
there are enough already. While he who resolutely, 
week by week, keeps in vital relation with the re- 
ligious institution, and hears the word of exhortation 
and instruction, and takes upon his lips the sen- 
tences of prayer and praise, is thereby helped. He 
sees ideals clearer and meets temptations better, and 
thinks higher thoughts. Is there any doubt about it ? 
Is it not good philosophy? Is it not in accord with 
what we positively know of common human nature ? 

A man ought to go to church for his own sake, be- 
cause he is so made as to need that sort of environ- 
ment for his spiritual good. That is what I have 
been saying, in a single sentence. A man ought also 
to go to church for the sake of his neighbors. That 
is the other thing of which I wish I might convince 
you. 

There is to-day a strong desire on the part of a 
great many people to be of use to the community. 
The old doctrine that a man may mind his own 
business and therewith be content, is giving way be- 
fore a better and more christian purpose, to behave 
as becomes a member of a great fraternity. I said 
that the emphasis of our present life is on the in- 
dividual, but we shall see that emphasis transferred 
to the institution. So far as we can judge at the 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



231 



moment, it is impossible that this twentieth century 
shall be an individualistic age. It will be an institu- 
tionalistic age. Powder and printing, which effected 
a crisis in human affairs and brought men out of the 
middle ages, were devisive forces. They exalted the 
individual. Steam and electricity, which are to-day 
effecting another crisis in the life of the race, and are 
bringing men into a new era, are social forces. In 
the world political, in the world commercial, they 
are steadily every day exalting the institution. They 
will work the same change in the world ecclesiastical. 
The christian church will stand in this new century 
into which we are marching, as it stood in the middle 
ages, exalted, dominant, controlling conduct, might- 
ier than it was then, because it will be strong with 
the strength of all its past experiences. It is said 
that men do not go to church to-day as they did a 
generation ago. That is but a temporary matter. It 
is a passing incident. It belongs to the domain of 
ecclesiastical weather. It is like the snows of Jan- 
uary and the rains of March, after which the roads 
dry off and the crops grow in the fields. Let us not 
vex our souls over the empty seats in the churches. 
They will be filled fast enough. You, yourselves, 
will fill them. But you come into this new world, 
where the social spirit is stirring the hearts of men 
like the wind and fire of Pentecost. And you are 
sure to feel it. You cannot help but ask, " How can 
I be of service to the neighborhood ? " 

The answer is that every man may be of service 



232 



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in two ways; by his good example, and by bis al- 
liance with the great beneficial forces. For both these 
kinds of service, there is an excellent opportunity 
every Sunday morning. 

For he who identifies himself with the Christian 
church sets a good example. That is plain enough. 
He, himself, may be in much or little need of what 
the church can give him, but somebody else, who is 
affected by his action, needs the church and needs 
it imperatively. Somebody there is whose destiny 
depends on what he gets at church next Sunday. 
There he will hear a word in the service or in the 
sermon or in the silence of his own soul, which will 
be a veritable word of God and will make an ever- 
lasting difference with him. As he turns the corner 
to the church, he will change the whole direction of 
his life. But he waits for you. He waits to see 
what turn, you make, and when you pass by without 
going in, he follows in your steps. You say to him 
as plain as spoken words, " The church is not worth 
while, " and he is obedient to that assertion. Every 
citizen who stays at home on Sunday, neglecting the 
institution to live his own individual life, hangs out 
a flag at his front door inscribed, " The Church Is 
Not Worth While." And the wider his influence in 
the community, the bigger the letters in which that 
legend is set forth. Every Sunday, every man in the 
neighborhood has a definite opportunity to serve his 
fellow men by his good example. 

The other kind of service bids also an open door 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



233 



into the church. He who identifies himself with 
institutional religion is in alliance with the great 
beneficial forces. The individual cannot transform 
the w T orld. The amendment of society depends upon 
the associated efforts of individuals in institutions. 
What is needed is that every man who is on the side 
of any kind of reform, of any endeavor after social 
betterment, of any of the causes which are engaging 
the interests of earnest men, shall strengthen the 
hands of those who are already working for the com- 
mon good. 

And here is the Christian Church, with all its 
manifold shortcomings, with its weaknesses and sins, 
with its grievous divisions and contentions, with its 
neglected opportunities — what other public institu- 
tion approaches it in its social possibilities or in its 
spiritual results ? Here may the man of affairs con- 
secrate his executive strength to the best service of 
his fellow-men, to the marshalling of the hosts of 
God against the armies of the devil. Here may the 
scholar bring his wisdom and his devotion to the 
truth into relation with the daily needs of men. 
Here may the young man bring his manhood, his 
courage and his hope, his high enthusiasm, and apply 
it to the holiest of missions, beginning the week as 
the knight his quest with his sword and shield laid 
down before the altar. 

There are two things which the church needs : It 
needs to be more sacramental, and it needs to be 
more sacerdotal. These, it is true, are the directions 



234 



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in which the church in the past has erred. It has 
been so sacramental and so sacerdotal that men have 
hated the sight of it. But the trouble has been that 
the altar and the priest have seemed to exist for the 
sole benefit of the ecclesiastical society. They have 
been directed towards the maintenance of the power 
and the wealth of the organization. They have been 
used in a coarse way for a coarse purpose. People 
have hated them because they have represented not 
only superstition but selfishness. ISTow, what we 
want is a sacramentalism and a sacerdotalism social- 
ized, divorced from selfish purposes, made available 
for human needs. We want a priest and an altar for 
the sake, not of the church, but of the people. We 
want the church to be sacramental ; that is, we would 
have it summon men, not so much to lectures, or 
even to sermons, as to a divine service, where they 
shall feel that they are in God's house and in God's 
presence. And we want the church to be sacerdotal ; 
that is, we would have it touched with a feeling of 
man's infirmities. We would have it consider that it 
is set in the community not to be ministered unto but 
to minister, not to save its life, but to give its life 
for the saving of the lives of men. We would have 
it a self-forgetful church, intent on doing good, bring- 
ing heaven down into our streets. 

These ideals we cannot realize unless we are helped 
by good men and women. They are worth realiz- 
ing; that is plain. To make them effective in 
our community is to render a high service to human- 



AT THE CHURCH DOOR 



235 



ity. A church into which men go to worship God, 
and out of which they come to serve their fellow- 
men, is the best blessing which any neighborhood can 
have. Whether there shall be such a church in your 
neighborhood depends in large measure upon you. 



m THE TIME OF TROUBLE 



Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil : for thou art with me. Ps. 23 : 4. 

The initial word reveals the writer in the midst of 
calamity. " Yea/' he says,— including in that single 
syllable the whole hard situation, and taking account 
of all the menace of still-impending disaster, — " Yea, 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil." 

The twenty-third Psalm was not written by a 
philosopher, who sat apart from life and looked at 
the world out of a window. It was written by a poet : 
but that is not the secret of its value to our soul. 
We did not learn it by heart, and bear it about there- 
after in our heart, because it is a fine bit of lyric 
verse. The writer of this psalm had walked in the 
valley of the shadow of death. He had been there, 
in the midst of the thick darkness, and knew by 
experience how it seems to go on between the grim 
hills, out of the sight of the sun and the stars, where 
the way is beset with perils and a man can hardly 
see his hand before his face. He had been there, and 
had come out again. He had walked through. 

Thus the Twenty-third Psalm speaks to us like 
the One Hundred and Nineteenth, where the writer 
says, " It is good for me that I have been in trouble." 

236 



IN THE TIME OF TROUBLE 



237 



How different that is from the chapter in psychol- 
ogy which proves by argument that affliction is 
beneficial to the soul, and shows how tribulation is 
well named from the Eoman tribulum, which sep- 
arated the wheat from the chaff. That is all true; 
it is as true as the north pole, and as remote and 
cold. What we want, in the time of trouble, is the 
testimony of personal experience, and the enabling 
sympathy which goes along with it. We turn to one 
who can say, " Yes, I know how it is. I too have 
stood as you stand to-day in the midst of alarms, in 
the face of calamity. And I know that the Lord is 
my shepherd, and that therefore I can lack nothing. 
I know that however hard the road along which He 
leads me, the sure destination is a green pasture be- 
side the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil, for the Lord is with me." The Twenty- 
third Psalm meets us with the consolation of a sym- 
pathy which is the flower of experience. 

The psalmist did not say, " I will expect no evil." 
He could not honestly say that. In the valley of the 
shadow of death, one must expect evils. The place 
is beset with them. The man walked on holding the 
hand of God, but he knew that even that divine com- 
panionship would not protect him from pain. It did 
not protect the penitent thief. There he hung upon 
the cross, with all the torment of crucifixion in his 
nerves; there he suffered, blessed of God and yet in 



238 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



agony of body. Presently, the soldiers came and 
broke his legs, and he died. 

The companionship of God did not defend Stephen 
from being stoned, nor Paul from being scourged. It 
did not put out the fires in which the martyrs gave 
their bodies to be burned. People used to think, in 
the Old Testament times, that material prosperity 
was an indication of the divine favor. If God loved 
a man, He gave him flocks and herds, and spared 
him from disease. If the man lost his flocks and 
herds, if he fell ill, God, for some good reason, had 
forsaken him. That was a hard doctrine to main- 
tain, and the Old Testament people felt its difficulty. 
The writer of the book of Job definitely abandoned 
it. Most people, however, continued in the old tra- 
dition, and found a curse in all calamity. Some of 
them declared that they saw it plainly. They per- 
ceived the ungodly in great power and flourishing 
like a green bay-tree, but the next day they went by, 
and lo, he was gone; they sought him, but his place 
could no where be found. Others were in much 
perplexity, perceiving how the ungodly prospered in 
the world and had riches in possession; they were 
tempted, in their own poverty and pain to say, 
" Then have I cleansed my heart in vain, and washed 
my hands in innocency." But they went into the 
sanctuary of God; they entered into relation with 
the unseen and eternal: and though their questions 
were not all answered, yet they were, able to say, 
" My flesh and my heart f aileth ; but God is the 



IN THE TIME OF TROUBLE 



239 



strength of my heart and my portion forever." Thus 
they found a footpath by which to climb out of the 
valley of the shadow of death. " My flesh f aileth " : 
I am sore beset with invincible disease : and " my 
heart faileth " ; for the moment I cry with the Su- 
preme Sufferer, " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me." But the darkness is behind me, and 
the light before. I stand at last on the summit of 
the hills, by the side of Him who said, " Though He 
slay me yet will I trust in Him for " God is the 
strength of my heart, and my portion forever 

When Christ came, he made it clear both in His 
words and in His life, that there is no contradiction 
between the love of God and the pain of man. The 
tower of Siloam and the cross of Calvary stand at the 
two ends of the valley of the shadow of death. " In 
the world ", he said, " ye shall have tribulation 
He Himself, the perfect man, the Son of God, the 
only begotten, the dearly beloved of the Father, suf- 
fered pain. He bore our sicknesses and carried our 
sorrows. 

Will prayer protect us? our own prayers or our 
neighbors' ? We know that mind addresses, influences 
and determines mind. Why may not mind, then, 
which thus may summon to our aid the earthly 
agents of God, our neighbors, similarly summon to 
our aid the heavenly agents of God ? It is a reason- 
able expectation. Unless we believe that the whole 
spiritual space between the human nature and the 
divine is empty, without population, and thus there 



240 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



are no heavenly agents to be summoned. That 
does not seem a logical influence from the manifold 
gradations of so much of the world as is within the 
range of our few senses. 

The prayers that are prayed at the beginnings of 
journeys, and by sick beds, and in the midst of dan- 
ger, and in fear of dangers remote and undefined, 
are they worth while ? They who go down into the 
valley of the shadow of death environed with the 
intercessions of their friends, are they more safe 
then than other people? 

In answer to such a question, we have to say that 
the Christian believer, pray we never so faithfully, 
must expect disaster. It comes to him as to every 
other human soul. Storm, accident, disease, pay no 
respect to persons. The good perish with the bad. 
There is indeed a divine providence under whose 
care we live : we are all of us more or less conscious 
of it. We have all of us, at one time or another, been 
aided in the midst of perils. It is probable, — yes, in 
the faith of the good Christian, it is certain,— that 
this protection is definitely connected with prayer. 
The prayers which we daily pray for the blessing of 
God on those who are nearest to us, for the strength 
of the sick, for the comfort of the afflicted, are worth 
while. They are effectual prayers. But they are 
not decisive. Sometimes they change the conditions ; 
sometimes they do not change the conditions. It de- 
pends on the conditions ; and also on a thousand other 
considerations of which we are quite ignorant. The 



IN THE TIME OP TROUBLE 



241 



writer of the psalm could not say, " Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
expect no evil He had lived too long, and seen 
too much, and suffered too much, to say that. But see 
what he did say, " I will fear no evil 

That is, there are two ways whereby evil may be 
met victoriously. One is by the preservation of the 
body; disaster, by some means human or divine, 
being deflected, so that the torment does not touch. 
The other is by the preservation of the soul ; disaster 
coming, torment triumphing, but the soul conquering. 
In this case, the man undertakes the task of God; 
who is forever turning evil into good. He is a fellow- 
laborer with God in the making of his own life ; as 
the phrase is, he makes the best of it. No matter 
how bad it is, he makes the best of it. You cannot 
imagine a situation in which the man who is master 
of his soul shall be of necessity overborne by the 
weight and burden of disaster. Hear St. Paul splen- 
didly defying tribulation, and distress, and perse- 
cution, and famine, and nakedness, and peril, and 
the sword; quoting the words, " For thy sake we 
are killed all the day long ; we are accounted as sheep 
for the slaughter ", but answering, " Nay, in all 
these things we are more than conquerors 

St. Paul had taken all these things and made them 
servants in his household. They ministered to him. 
By the grace of God he transformed them so that they 
helped him. 

The career of the Emperor Henry the Fourth be- 



242 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



gan in waywardness and folly^ in utter selfishness 
and disregard for all the rights of others. The young 
man was going straight down a steep hill into the 
valley of the shadow of the death of the soul, and 
was carrying the nation with him. Suddenly, a great 
province, cruelly misgoverned, flamed up in tre- 
mendous insurrection. In a moment, the whole peo- 
ple everywhere, as at the sound of trumpets rose 
against the king. But in that moment the bad king 
rose against himself. His conscience spoke and his 
soul answered. It was a new birth; the king from 
that day was a new man. The disaster had saved 
him. 

In quiet ways that transformation is continually 
taking place. That which seems to be calamity is 
in truth the divine benediction. We know that the 
adversity is a blessing because we see with our own 
eyes that the man is blessed. 

Disaster, then, is what we make it. It is like the 
rain, which makes the grass clean, and the road 
muddy, and has no effect upon the ocean. It is like 
the seed, which falls upon this soil and upon that, 
here rising in a hasty growth and withering away, 
there mixed with thorns, but in the good ground 
yielding a good harvest. It all depends upon our 
soul. Disaster is not disaster, even in its worst 
forms, unless we so translate it. Every adversity 
may be translated into strength and happiness. 

Sometimes this translation is accomplished by 
simple lapse of time. The situation solves itself. 



IN THE TIME OF TROUBLE 



243 



The sky was black, and all the signals were set for 
a great storm, but the storm never came. Or if it 
did come, it watered the earth and made it to bring 
forth and bud. It was a good storm. Nine-tenths 
of all disaster is exaggerated in anticipation. Some- 
body says, " I have suffered much from many cal- 
amities, few of which ever happened." Take out 
of life the pain of premonition, the distress of im- 
agination, the endurance of ills which in fact never 
came to pass, and the whole sky is clear of cloud. 
The future is very rarely so bad or so hard as we 
expect. 

Sometimes this translation is effected, as I said, 
by the perception of benefit. We know that it is 
good for us. Sometimes it is effected only by our 
conviction of the ultimate love and wisdom by which 
the world is governed. The thing is hard, beyond 
expression and beyond understanding: but God is 
good. " Everything," says the stoic, " is harmo- 
nious with me which is harmonious to thee, O uni- 
verse. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which 
is in due time for thee." "All things," says the 
Christian, " work together for good to them that 
love God." Not that they are good, in the sense of 
being pleasant or commonly profitable; but that the 
assurance of the love of God enables us to accept 
them, of whatever sort they are, as a part of His 
great plan. " Thou hast given me life," says the 
dying philosopher, praying his last prayer, " I thank 
thee for that which thou hast given: so long as I 



244 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



have used the things which are thine I am content; 
take them back and place them wherever thou may- 
est choose: for thine were all things — thou gavest 
them to me. . . . What life is better and more 
becoming than that of a man who is in this state of 
mind, and what end is more happy ? " 

" Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Can we, in- 
deed, translate disaster into benediction when it ends 
in death? Can we who stand forlorn and bereaved 
say from our hearts not only, " the Lord gave and the 
Lord hath taken away," but " Blessed be the name 
of the Lord ? " Yes, we can, if we are disciples of 
Jesus Christ. We can do even that, if we believe 
that He is indeed the revelation of eternal truth, and 
the manifestation of God. For then we know that 
our friend who goes out of our sight enters into 
another world of unimaginable satisfaction, into an- 
other life of which this present is but the dim and 
crude beginning, full of opportunity, full of new 
activity, where they who here have been faithful 
over a few things shall there be rulers over many 
things. And we know that our friend's work which 
he had begun is now for us to carry forward, in the 
inspiration of the remembrance of his spirit, till 
we all come together in that blessed land of full and 
clear interpretation, where we shall understand 
God and one another without perplexity, and where 
our work and our joy, like our love, shall know no 
end. 



IN THE TIME OF TROUBLE 



245 



u For thou art with me," adds the writer of the 
psalm. " I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." 
" Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death," I will go on with courage, with 
a serene soul, holding the hand of God. It matters 
not what world we live in, whether here or there, in 
God we live and have our being. 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE AEMY OF 
MARTYRS 



Ye shall be witnesses unto me. Acts 1:9. 

The apostles returned from the Mount of Olives 
with these words sounding in their ears. It accounts, 
in some measure, for their remarkable change of 
mind. The ascension, like the crucifixion, had taken 
away their Master out of their sight, but after the 
crucifixion they had returned beating their breasts, 
in dumb lamentation, bound down with a grief so 
heavy and a despair so hopeless that they had no 
words in which to bewail it; while from the ascen- 
sion they returned with great joy. They had a new 
faith: that was the chief reason for their new cour- 
age. But they had also a new duty, and that con- 
tributed much to their new happiness. They had a 
definite thing to do. The Lord, in His last confer- 
ence with them, as they walked together from the 
city to the hill, had given them a great commission. 
They were to take His place. They were to fulfill the 
word which He had already spoken when He said, 
" As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." 
They were to be witnesses unto Him. 

The apostles immediately interpreted this charge 
in terms of truth. 

The first thing which the Eleven did when they 

246 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF MARTYRS 247 

got back to the city was to add to their company. 
They restored again the mystic number, which had 
probably been suggested in the first place by the 
Twelve Tribes, and which was accordingly the sym- 
bol of spiritual privilege and mission. And the 
business of the twelfth man, like that of the others, 
was to be a witness of the resurrection. That was 
the truth which they felt charged to proclaim. There- 
after the Christian witness and the doctrine of the 
rising from the dead are found continually together 
in the pages of the New Testament. " With great 
power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection 
of the Lord Jesus." That describes both their private 
and their public ministry. It is a report of the sub- 
stance of all their sermons. 

Such an announcement carried with it two con- 
ditional facts concerning Jesus Christ. 

The first fact was that He was the Son of God. 
That was already evident in His words and deeds: 
it was proved by His personality. It was a fact 
to be perceived and recognized, not to be attested 
by any other argument. This, however, while it is 
true, is practically true of only those who have clear 
spiritual insight. To the saint, to the poet, to the 
philosopher who is emancipated from the bondage 
of materialism, Jesus is seen, without reference to 
the resurrection, to be the manifestation of God. 
That God was in Christ is plain to them by the sight 
of His face and the sound of His voice. Even if His 
life had apparently ended on the cross, there would 



248 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



have been noble souls who even in the face of that 
tragedy would have cried, " My Lord and my God." 
But not many. Most of us need some assurance 
tangible and visible, something of which we may 
actually lay hold, and which shall be as convincing 
on the side of faith as the cross was convincing on 
the side of doubt. We are of the disposition of St. 
Thomas, who said, " Except I shall see, I cannot 
believe." And for such as us, the resurrection came 
to confirm our faith. We believe indeed in the di- 
vinity of Jesus Christ by reason of His evidently 
divine personality, but we are enabled to perceive 
that He is divine by the fact of the resurrection. 
Thus the apostles appealed to all manner of people 
on the ground that Jesus Christ was declared to be 
the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. 

That was the first fact to which they bore their 
witness, and the second proceeded from it. The 
second fact was that since Jesus was the Son of God 
the words which He spoke concerning the world in- 
visible and spiritual He spoke out of His own im- 
mediate knowledge. As He said, He knew whereof 
He spoke. The truths which He taught were not 
new truths. They had been, more or less clearly, at 
the heart of all religion since the world began. That 
God is our Father and that after this life there is 
another, are doctrines whose origin was in an unre- 
corded revelation, which God gave to the souls of 
primitive people before history began. What Jesus 
did was to bring into religion a new element of cer- 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF MARTYRS 249 

tainty. That which wise men had guessed, He now 
affirmed. Philosophy, He lifted into faith, 

Here, again, as in the case of the resurrection, 
he did a service to the plain man. Let us say that 
there are pure and devout souls for whom philosophy 
is sufficient; or, setting aside the idea of philosophy, 
which was foreign to the Old Testament mind, there 
are saints and sages whose perception of spiritual 
truth is so clear and immediate and convincing, that 
they do not wait for any word of authority. But the 
plain man does. We say, " I do not understand. I 
cannot answer the importunate questions of my 
own soul. How can I understand except some man 
should guide me ? " And when we hear the voice 
of J esus saying in our own language, " This is the 
way, walk ye in it/' we turn and follow Him with 
inexpressible gladness. We say, " He knows, be- 
cause He is the Son of God." One of the differences 
between those who perceive that Jesus is the Son 
of God and those who see in Him only the Son of 
Man is that faith confers assurance. Beyond all 
conjecture, beyond all peradventure, these high things 
we know. 

Thus went out the apostles commissioned to be 
witnesses unto Christ, and interpreting their com- 
mission in terms of truth. Then came the tragedy 
of Stephen. Stephen had borne witness to the Lord 
Jesus by proclaiming the resurrection, but when in 
further confirmation of the faith he offered his life, 
he thereby introduced into the Christian religion 



250 



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a new kind of testimony. And this was at once ap- 
preciated and exalted, so that presently when one 
was spoken of as a witness, — the Greek word for 
witness being martyr, — it was understood that he 
had interpreted our Lord's commission not only in 
terms of truth but in terms of tragedy. He had 
borne witness to Christ by suffering pain and death 
for love of Him. Thus, with St. Stephen leading, 
the noble army of martyrs marched to their victo- 
rious war against indifference, against prejudice and 
against hostility. 

Thus in the Book of Revelation we find the word 
witness used with this new meaning. " I saw the 
souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of 
Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not 
worshipped the beast, neither had received his mark 
upon their foreheads, or in their hands." It is plain 
that these witnesses had been concerned with much 
more than the doctrine of the resurrection. They 
had met and courageously encountered not only doubt 
but evil. They had testified to Christ not only as 
regards the truth but as regards the life with which 
that truth is inseparably connected. Not only did 
they bear their witness in dramatic action but it had 
to do with the whole range of human conduct. The 
tragedy with which their witness had been crowned 
resulted from this wideness of interests: because 
while the proclamation of a new truth may come into 
contention with prejudice, the proclamation of a new 
life comes into sharp contention with active enmity. 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF MARTYRS 251 

The witness-bearer proposes to reform the community 
and the community resents it. 

Moreover, the witness to Jesus, as it was understood 
by St. Stephen and the martyrs, carried with it an 
obligation to intolerance. They were not content to 
teach a new truth and a new life, they opposed them- 
selves to the old. They were not willing that the old 
should continue to exist. That was what perplexed 
and embittered the wise men of the Roman Empire. 
They put the martyrs to death in the days of the 
persecutions not so much on account of their re- 
ligion as on account of a certain conscientious in- 
hospitality of the Christians whereby they were ac- 
cused of being the enemies of society. That was the 
situation. And it had the advantage of being per- 
fectly plain. It was evident beyond mistake that they 
who were behaving themselves in this straight and 
outspoken and uncompromising way ^were witnesses 
to Christ. The love of Christ constrained them. 
They went in the face of all considerations of com- 
mon prudence, and thereby stood out in the open, in 
plain sight. And when they suffered for their faith, 
that which was already plain, was magnified, so that 
nobody could miss it. 

The martyrs, however, bearing their splendid wit- 
ness to their love of country or to their love of Christ, 
are somewhat exceptional persons and are depend- 
ent on exceptional occasions. We hope that if the 
call should come to us which came to them we also 
might be found ready as they were, though we are 



252 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



4 



glad that neither our patriotism nor our religion is 
at this moment put to so severe a test; it is likely 
that we shall reach the end of our quiet lives with 
no opportunity for the exercise of the major martyr- 
dom. It is improbable that any of us shall be in high 
command in the noble army of martyrs. At the same 
time, that is a standing army. It is never disbanded. 
Though the great wars be few, there is a continual 
contention, against the principalities and powers of 
evil, against the temptations of the devil. And in 
this unceasing contention we all have our part. We 
may not be called to resist unto blood striving against 
sin, but we are all called to resist. We are at least 
foot soldiers in the army of martyrs. Our Lord's 
commission which is interpreted in terms of truth 
and in terms of tragedy is to be interpreted also in 
terms of common life. We are to be witnesses unto 
Him by the testimony of our daily conduct. 

It is plain that the kind of conduct which is a 
witness to Christ is different from the ordinary. It 
becomes a testimony to Him by being different. The 
ordinary life we live in obedience to social customs. 
But when one departs from the conventional habit 
of the neighborhood and does a markedly different 
thing, people say, " What does that mean ? why is 
he not like the others ? " And if the answer is, " He 
is unlike the others because he is trying to do the 
will of Jesus Christ," then his conduct is a wit- 
ness to Christ. It is evident that conventional liv- 
ing bears no special witness to Him, because we 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF MARTYRS 253 

would live that way anyhow. Of course, as the 
world grows better under the increasing influence of 
Christianity, the conventional life becomes more 
Christian. But it is still true, and will probably 
continue to be true for a long time, that convention- 
ality and Christianity have their plain points of 
difference. It is at these points that the good Chris- 
tian discloses himself. The alternative is his op- 
portunity. Here he makes his humble fight, on 
foot, in the undistinguished ranks, at a remote dis- 
tance from the martyrs yet akin to their spirit. Here 
he bears his witness to the fact that the will of Jesus 
Christ is the supreme and determining influence in 
his life. This he does, or that he does not, because 
he is constrained not by social customs but by the 
love of Christ. 

One way by which we may bear witness to Christ 
is by our behavior in respect to enmity. We are 
offended by our neighbors. We are injured in our 
feelings, in our material interests, in our prospects, 
in our good name, by the word or deed of one who, 
so far as we can see, has done the thing with de- 
liberation and intention. Immediately we are sum- 
moned by two voices: one is the voice of instinct, 
echoing down out of the wild forests in which our 
far-away savage ancestors fought the beasts and 
each other; the other is the voice of religion, speak- 
ing in the Sermon on the Mount. The voice of in- 
stinct says, " Hate him, pay him back, injure him 
as he has injured you, an eye for an eye, and a tooth 



254 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



for a tooth." The voice of religion says, " Love 
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to 
them that hate you." I am not concerned now to 
show how the voice of religion is in accord with right 
reason and with the surest attainment of all our best 
desires. I am simply calling attention to what the 
voice of religion says, in order to show how sharply 
it departs from instinct and convention, and how 
this difference enables us to bear witness to Christ. 
When in the presence of enmity we behave our- 
selves according to His rule, we proclaim our allegi- 
ance to Him. One who looks on says, " Why don't 
he strike back ? " and another says, " He doesn't 
strike back because he is a Christian." 

A second way by which we may bear witness to 
Christ is by our behavior in respect to ambition. 
There is, indeed, a noble ambition whereby we strive 
daily to improve ourselves, to enrich our minds, to 
perform our tasks with excellence, to be of increas- 
ing use in the world. But ambition, in the bad 
sense, is a desire not so much to do the work as to be 
paid or praised for doing it. We are in quest of 
position, of power, of reputation,- — all of which has 
to do with the outside of life, and with our own 
selfish interest. Our purpose is not to accomplish 
any noble thing ; but to exalt ourselves. Here again 
Christ draws a clear line of difference. " The kings 
of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them ; and they 
that exercise authority upon them are called bene- 
factors. But ye shall not be so : but he that is great- 



FOOT SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY OF MARTYRS 255 



est among you, let him be as the younger, and he 
that is chief as he that doth serve." And this is re- 
peated in various ways. " He that exalteth himself 
shall be abased." " He that saveth his life shall 
lose it." I am not concerned to show how this fits 
with ordinary prudence, or how it may be service- 
able in the pursuit of success. Here it is, a plain 
distinctive principle of Christian action. The time 
comes when the good work and our material in- 
terests stand apart. The work remains, but our pay 
stops. We are not rewarded with office, or with 
proper remuneration, or with deference or gratitude, 
or even with appreciation: we are not personally 
exalted. Then one who looks on says, " Why does he 
go on doing all that hard work when there is nothing 
in it for him ? " And another answers, " The rea- 
son why he keeps on though there is nothing in it 
for him is because he is a Christian." 

A third way by which we may bear witness to 
Christ is by our behavior in respect to trouble. I 
mean by trouble all disappointment, all failures of our 
plans, all reverses of fortune, all pain and sickness 
and sorrow. The natural eifect of trouble is to de- 
press our spirits. We lose heart, we betake ourselves 
to lamentation, and ask questions to which we get 
no satisfying answers. The sky is black over our 
heads, and the way before us leads into the driving 
storm. We go about with sad faces, and contribute 
our malady of grief to the souls of our neighbors, 
like a contagion. We lose our faith. We let go the 



256 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



hand of God. Our failure, or sorrow, spoils our life. 
That is human nature. But against that, our Lord 
set Himself by His word and His example. He was 
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but He 
lived notwithstanding a life which was filled not only 
with faith and with service but with great dominant 
joy. He said indeed that trouble is a part of the 
common human lot, and that they who followed Him 
would have their share of it: in the world you shall 
have tribulation. But He said also, " Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world." Then one looks 
on and says, " How does such-a-one bear up so under 
his heavy ills? He has lost his money, death has 
visited his household, and he lies in the pain of sick- 
ness; and yet he is amazingly cheerful. How does 
he do it ? " And another answers, " Why, that he 
does because he is a Christian." 

Thus the great commission, " Ye shall be wit- 
nesses unto me," is interpreted in terms of daily 
life. In terms of teaching, if we have opportunity 
to teach; in terms of tragedy, if the sublime sum- 
mons of martyrdom should come; but all the time, 
in our obscurity, within our narrow limitations, — 
all the time, in terms of common life. " I believe, 
we say, " in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our 
Lord." And He says, as He said once to the apostles, 
" Do you now believe ? Behold the hour cometh, 
yea, is now come, when you shall have opportunity 
to show your belief by your behavior. In what re- 
spect are you different from your neighbors because 
of me?" 



SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 



How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him. 
St. Matt. 18:21. 

In answer to Peter's question as to the number of 
times our brother may sin against us and we must 
still forgive him, Jesus multiplies seven by seventy. 
According to the multiplication table the result is 
four hundred and ninety. Is that what Jesus meant ? 
Are we free to hate our brother upon the occasion 
of his four hundred and ninty-first offence ? That 
is, did J esus always mean exactly what He said ? 

The inquiry is of universal importance. The re- 
ply to it settles a score of problems. Is the Bible to 
be interpreted according to the letter? that is what 
the question signifies. Are we to take it sentence by 
sentence, word by word, and to read it with a gram- 
mar and a dictionary ? Is it to be understood like a 
page of mathematics, like a chapter in a census re- 
port, like a lawyer's brief? Are we to have latitude 
and room, or not, in our reading of it? Are we 
bound by exactly what the Bible says ? 

The bearing of these questions upon our present 
conduct is evident upon slight reflection. Thus there 
is no command in Holy Scripture more plain, direct, 
unqualified, than the injunction to wash each other's 
feet. Here are the words that Jesus spoke, on the 

257 



258 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



night in which He was betrayed : " If I then ; the 
Lord and the Master, have washed your feet, ye also 
ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given 
you an example, that ye also should do as I have 
done to you." The institution of the sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper is not more imperative. And 
there are Christians who keep that commandment 
with regularity and devotion. If we disregard it, the 
reason is that we do not believe that seventy times 
seven means four hundred and ninety. 

Take also the ritual of the sacrament of baptism. 
The word of Jesus is that we should be baptized. 
The precise verb that He used has for its more com- 
mon meaning the plunging of the body beneath the 
water. It is true that the Israelites were said to be 
baptized in the Red Sea where they were met only 
by the spray of the storm; it is true also that the 
apostles were baptized with the fire that rested only 
on their heads ; so that there seems to be a space for 
differences in the scriptural signification of the term. 
But it is plain that the more usual meaning, and the 
more usual practise of the ancients, point to immer- 
sion. ]STow the question is whether or not the Lord 
meant exactly what He said. Did He have in mind a 
certain definite ritual, as He spoke, so that unless the 
convert goes down under the water there is no valid 
baptism? Or can we say that, as the purport of the 
washing of feet was the lesson of humility, so here, 
if there be water in symbol of spiritual cleansing, 
it matters not how much, whether a bowl-full or a 



SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 



259 



tank-full, nor does it matter how it is applied, 
whether by immersion or by pouring ? That depends 
upon our way of working out the sum which Jesus 
set for Peter. Seventy times seven : if that means 
four hundred and ninety, then the validity of bap- 
tism depends upon the Greek dictionary and the 
text-book of Christian antiquities. 

Another debated instance is one that has divided 
Christendom. Motley says that " the bitter dispute 
between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real 
presence did more to impede the progress of the 
Reformation than ban or edict, sword or fire." And 
that dispute turned upon the question whether or not 
our Lord meant exactly what He said when He de- 
clared at the last supper, " This is my body." There 
is a vast number of persons, not confined to any 
one communion, who insist upon a literal interpreta- 
tion. Any other reading, they maintain, is evasive 
and irreverent. We must follow the blessed Lord's 
own words: we must take them precisely as they 
stand: He meant exactly what He said. 

This difference of explanation is the more serious 
in that it stands to-day in the path of Christian 
unity. It is remarkable that the two sacraments 
which our Lord intended to be the bonds of Chris- 
tian fellowship should have been changed into bar- 
riers. It is especially singular that the widest dif- 
ferences are caused by the sacrament which we know 
as the communion. Nothing has so hindered union 
as our divergent views of the communion. 



260 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



These differences are the chief reason for the wide 
chasm between Protestantism and Romanism. They 
make the unlikeness between the cathedral and the 
conventicle, between the two forms of worship, be- 
tween the priest and the preacher. And back of 
them is their first difference of interpretation. When 
Christ said, " This is my body," did He mean it ? 
Seventy times seven, does it equal four hundred and 
ninety ? " Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees," 
—was Christ speaking of literal leaven, that is, 
yeast ? Was He warning the disciples against the 
Pharisees' bad bread ? "I am the vine," " I am the 
door," — did He mean precisely what He said ? 

Nothing, it seems to me, can be more plain than 
that Jesus made frequent use of metaphor, and of 
expressions that were intended to teach a truth which 
lay not upon the surface, not in the grammatical 
construction of the words, but beneath the surface, 
in the spirit. And what is true of His words is true 
also of all the rest of the Bible. The speakers and 
writers were not mathematicians enunciating formu- 
las, not theologians stating dogmas. They spoke with 
oriental poetry and liberty of speech. They did not 
address themselves to the literal mind of us western 
people, but to the more imaginative mind of the 
people who were actually before them. If we are to 
understand them rightly we must read their words 
thus freely, largely, spiritually. Seventy times seven 
does not equal four hundred and ninety in the arith- 
metic of the Gospels; it means a number without 



SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 



261 



limit, beyond counting. Peter is to go on forgiving, 
and forgiving, and forgiving, till he comes before that 
judgment throne where he himself will need forgive- 
ness. 

The words suggest the spiritual interpretation of 
the scripture; they teach, even more directly, the 
spiritual standard of life. 

The apostle desires to have a rule laid down touch- 
ing forgiveness. He wishes some plain precept to go 
by. " How oft shall my brother sin against me and 
I forgive him ? " The rule that he suggests, as a 
reasonable one in such a case, is " Seven times." 
Yet he is evidently in some doubt concerning it, for 
he submits it to the Master, putting it in the form 
of a question. 

If we could live by an external rule, we might 
save ourselves much anxiety and get great burdens 
off our conscience. If somebody could tell us exactly 
what to do all the day long, and we might dispense 
with choice and thought, life would be easier. It is 
this continual necessity for decision that vexes us. 

Thus we have a craving for infallibility. We 
would have some master to tell us what to believe, 
so that we might no longer worry over the difficulties 
of the creeds. Some voice must speak ; some un- 
blundering oracle must teach; either the Church or 
the Bible must be unfailingly and unfalteringly true, 
so that we may but listen and obey. This is not an 
uncommon desire of the wearied and wandering soul 
of man. And there is the same craving in regard to 



262 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



conduct. We would have a system of rules set down 
for our religious life which we might simply follow, 
and be saved. 

It is notable, however, that Jesus was forever care- 
ful not to compel assent. His most striking miracles 
were always so performed as to leave some bit of 
standing-room for the unbeliever. There was 
scarcely one from which at least a few went away 
without enthusiasm or faith, giving rationalistic rea- 
sons for the wonder they had seen. That seems to 
have been His intention. He was all the time trying 
to get His disciples to do their own thinking and de- 
ciding. He would not save them the trouble of 
choosing between the true and the untrue. He would 
not help them with the final utterance of infallibility. 

So, too, with duty. He declined again and again 
to lay down rules. The Jewish religion had answers, 
direct and definite, to all such questions as Peter's. 
Let a man give such and such a proportion of his 
goods for religious uses, keeping the rest. Let him 
say such and such prayers, and keep such and such 
fasts, and be rewarded of God. Let him forgive 
his brother seven times, and the eighth time take 
his revenge. It shows how Peter was growing out 
of his old Judaism into some better understanding 
of the truth that Jesus taught when He comes, dis- 
satisfied with the narrow rule, asking if it is a good 
rule, evidently doubting the worth of it. He was 
passing out of a religion of " works," where the keep- 
ing of rules was the main thing, into a religion of 



SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 263 

faith, where the measure of value is the nature, the 
spirit, the heart that moves the hand. 

It was the same when the lawyer asked for a 
definition of the word, " neighbor " — " who is my 
neighbor ? " He desired that a rule should be laid 
down which he might follow, parting men into neigh- 
bors and strangers, and thus making it easy to know 
who were to be helped and who were to be passed by. 
Jesus gave no rule. What He did was to recite a 
parable ■ which emphasized the supreme importance 
of the neighborly spirit. There was that other time 
when He was asked to decide between the two breth- 
ren who were disputing over the division of their 
father's estate. He refused to do it. Instead of ex- 
amining the accounts, and going into the figures, and 
arbitrating between them, He insisted that they 
should decide their own dispute. His contribution 
to their case was the suggestion of a principle, w 7 hieh, 
if they applied it, would make quick work of their 
selfish quarrel — " Take heed and beware of covetous- 
ness." That would settle it. That is better to-day, in 
our present industrial troubles, than a whole book- 
storeful of volumes on political economy. 

Our life, according to Jesus Christ, is not to be 
built up like a house, brick upon brick, stone upon 
stone, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a 
little and there a little. It is not a mechanical 
erection, but a growth. It is to be like a flower or 
like a tree. The good deeds of some people are 
not a real product of their lives; they do not grow 



264 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



out of their hearts. And they are apt to be in such 
case, mere imitation fruit, like the red-cheeked ap- 
ples that are really nothing but pincushions. Growth 
begins at the inside and goes out and up. If there 
is life there must be growth. The thing to think 
about is not the blossom or the fruit but the vital 
principle in the root that makes the blossom and the 
fruit. That must be nourished, cultivated, fed, min- 
istered to. Then the harvest will follow. 

That is what Jesus Christ always looked for and 
cared for. You will not find him attending to the 
branches, but the tree trunk and the roots. He came 
that we might have life, and life abundantly. He 
taught principles, which had to do with the life, 
with the heart, of a man. 

Thus He takes this question of Peter's concerning 
forgiveness, this old-new question, which has been 
debated for ages and which we have not settled yet, 
• — the limits of forgiveness, where are they ? He takes 
this question and deals with it on the spiritual side, 
going down to the deep root of the matter. There is 
no rule about it. 

Our brother has sinned against us. You see how 
hard that is. There is no mistake about the sin, we 
have been really and deeply injured. And the of- 
fender is our brother. It would be easier to forgive 
our enemy ; even our neighbor we might make excuse 
for ; but this is our brother. It is the closest friends 
who, once parted, get farthest apart. It is the 
family discussion that makes the bitterest feeling, 



SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN 



265 



makes parents forget their natural love, and brothers 
forget the will of Jesus Christ. So many delicate 
and intertangled nerves of affection are cut in such 
wounding, that it seems hopeless to unite them; and 
only the love that men and women learn from Jesus 
Christ can do it. The case is as bad as it can be. 
" Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and 
I forgive him ? " Seven times seems too many. Once 
is enough, some people think. But Jesus pushes out 
the limit of forgiveness till it touches the circle of the 
sky, — " until seventy times seven." 

And He makes His meaning plain by the par- 
able that He tells of the unjust servant. We all 
have offended against God. Day by day, our indif- 
ference, if not our defiance, grieves the heart of 
God. Seven times ? Seven thousand times would not 
begin to reckon it. Yet God forgives us. He is 
moved with compassion, as he listens to our prayer for 
pardon. He forgives us all our debt. Oh marvel 
of mercy, we go free ! How then shall we deal with 
our fellow-servant, with our brother? Shall we be- 
gin to lay down petty regulations, to make mean and 
narrow limitations, to count up the pence and the 
half-pence of his debt? Shall we upon whom the 
eternal Father has compassion withdraw our own 
compassion ? It is not a matter of much or less, of 
times or causes, of measurements or reckonings, it is 
the spirit which God cares for; it is the forgiving 
spirit which he looks to see in us, growing into all 
manner of gracious and kindly fruitage. Nothing 



266 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



else can satisfy Him. One prayer He will surely an- 
swer : He will forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
those who trespass against us. " So likewise shall my 
heavenly Father do also unto you, if you from your 
hearts ye forgive not every one his brother their tres- 
passes." 



ON LOVING GOD 



Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind. 
St. Luke 10:27. 

It is written in the gospels how a certain lawyer 
asked and answered an important question. What 
shall I do, he said, to inherit eternal life? And 
Jesus made him give his own reply to the inquiry. 
For the man was quite able to answer his own ques- 
tion. It was not knowledge that he needed: he 
knew enough. He was a man of books, and was 
sufficiently informed as to the judgments of the wise 
touching life eternal. His need was not so much in- 
tellectual as spiritual. What he lacked was realiza- 
tion and appreciation. 

God's purpose is that every human soul shall in- 
herit eternal life. And, accordingly, the conditions 
of that blessed inheritance are so plain and so pos- 
sible that they are within the reach of even the 
humblest persons. Heaven will not be reserved for 
the philosophers. A great many very ignorant peo- 
ple will get in there, I hope. We may be sure that 
in His sight, to whom the profoundest wisdom of 
this world is but once removed from foolishness, 
learning is not half so acceptable as love. When 
Jesus taught that God is our father, he established 

267 



268 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the supremacy of affection in religion. The Father 
is pleased when the child learns the table of nines 
so that he can recite from nine times one to nine 
times twelve without a blunder; as the years pass, 
the father is pleased, when the son or the daughter 
gains an honorable place in college, or attains dis- 
tinction in the society of letters ; but all of this, from 
beginning to end, is of small value compared with 
the personal relation between the son or the daughter 
and the father. That is the thing that is supremely 
precious. Your son may know enough to compose 
an encyclopedia in twenty-four large volumes, but if 
he does not care for you, if he does not love you, if he 
is a student rather than a son, what is all the learning 
worth ? 

It is clear, then, that eternal life, whose largest 
element is that of intimate paternal and filial rela- 
tion between God and man, is not so hidden away 
that only the sages or the saints can find it. The 
truth is that the secret of eternal life is in the heart 
of every human being. There are those who are 
waiting for some new and wonderful revelation to 
teach them a saving truth which they have never 
known. They are seeking in this direction or in 
that for a teacher or a book. They are looking for 
an experience such as St. Paul had on the Damascas 
road. They are expecting that some magic gate will 
open in the side of the steep hill, and that through 
this miraculous door, as by a path before unseen 
and unheard of, they will enter at last into the king- 



ON LOVING GOD 



269 



dom of heaven. They ask the lawyer's question: 
what shall I do ? And, all the time, they know as 
much as they have need to know. 

Our Lord's dealing with the lawyer's question 
teaches the adequacy of present truth. He referred 
the man to that book which it was his professional 
business to copy out and learn by heart. You re- 
member that He met the rich young ruler in the 
same way. " "What good thing shall I do," asked 
the young man, " that I may have eternal life." 
And Jesus answered, " If thou will enter into life, 
keep the commandments " — just the plain, old ten 
commandments, which the man had known by heart, 
and had kept, after a fashion, from his youth up. 
So, again, in our Lord's parable, the rich man said 
to Abraham that if one were to rise from the dead, 
his careless brothers would believe. That is, if they 
could learn some new fact, and have some unusual 
experience, they would inherit eternal life. But 
Abraham answered, out of a profound knowledge of 
human nature, that if the rich man's brother paid no 
heed to the daily common preaching of the word of 
God, nothing would do them any good. Xo ghost, 
nor dozen ghosts, bringing messages, with th^ ink 
undried, from the council chambers of heaven, would 
have any decisive effect upon them. They knew al- 
ready all that they needed to know. 

How to be saved ? — everybody has to answer in his 
own heart. Jesus made the lawyer reply to his own 
question. He made him read his own answer. There 



270 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



it was, written in the man's mind, waiting to be read. 
What the lawyer needed was to translate knowledge 
into action. Thou hast answered right," the Master 
said, this do, and thou shalt live." It is the differ- 
ence between knowing the truth intellectually and 
knowing it religiously ; between truth academic, in a 
book, and truth active and applied, in a life ; between 
truth interpreted by learning, and truth interpreted 
by love. 

The lawyer answered the question, and Jesus let 
the answer stand just as he stated it: Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all 
thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself. The Master 
added nothing. He came to make His greatest reve- 
lation not by a new word but by a new life. The 
truths which He taught were old truths; they had 
been dwelt upon by prophets and psalmists, and 
had been in the mind and conscience of the race for 
ages. They were elemental truths, so simple and 
essential that most of them had been perceived by 
sages and saints of all lands. They belonged to 
God's universal revelation. It has sometimes been 
made a matter of criticism that the christian religion 
has so little in it which is original. The Sermon on 
the Mount, some say, was an old sermon. It had 
been preached a thousand times upon a thousand hills. 
This, however, is to miss the purpose of Christ's 
coming. He came not to bring new truth but to in- 
terpret and vitalize and apply the old. He came to 



ON LOVING GOD 



271 



do for the whole race what He was here requiring 
this lawyer to do for himself, to take the truth which 
was already possessed and live it. He put new life 
into old truth by His blessed embodiment of it in 
himself. He made men see it in a new way. He 
took it out of the difficult books and wrote it on the 
cross in words so plain that he who ran might read. 
It seemed a new truth, as steam and electricity seem 
new forces by their new uses. But the newness of 
it was in the clearer perception of the bearing of the 
truth upon our personal duty and destiny. Our 
Lord's conversation with the lawyer was thus sym- 
bolical of all His ministers of teaching. It illustrates 
His method. It declares the adequacy of the truth 
which we all have already. It takes that which we 
know by heart, and sets it to work in our daily living. 

The old truth which was thus made new in our 
Lord's conference with the lawyer was the truth of 
the supremacy of love in religion. The apostle was 
right who declared that love is the fulfilling of the 
law. He was right, too, who said, " Only love, then 
do anything," for he who genuinely loves can do 
naught amiss either towards his heavenly Father or 
towards his neighbor. Above all eloquent speech, 
though a man talk with the tongue of an angel ; above 
all knowledge and intellectual discernment, and un- 
derstanding of the doctrines of theology, above all 
strength of faith, though we had a spiritual confi- 
dence which could remove a mountain range of diffi- 
culty and make a straight path for our feet; above 



272 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



all generosity and bountiful provision for the poor; 
above all other excellent qualities, love is supreme. 
There is nothing else for which God cares so much. 
The love of God and of our neighbor is the open 
gate into eternal life. 

But how can man love God ? How can the finite 
love the infinite ? How can we who are shut in by the 
narrow boundaries of the small world of our few 
senses, and so dependent on what our senses blunder- 
ingly report to us — how can we love the invisible, 
the inaudible, the omnipotent spirit ? It is like lov- 
ing the universal sky* 

This is a difficulty which almost everyboy will 
recognize and appreciate. The poet does not find it 
a serious hindrance; the philosopher makes little of 
it ; the great mind does not meet it. But we meet it. 
One of the differences between the rare people and 
the plain people, between the sages and their neigh- 
bors, is that the wise live on the hills while the rest 
of us live in the valleys. They look out along a wide 
horizon, so that they are accustomed to think great 
thoughts, and the thought of God does not perplex 
them. They are in the habit of seeing through the 
material and the visible and perceiving the unseen. 
They behold the heart of things. Thus in all the 
world about them they see God, clad with the ver- 
dure of the fields and with the colors of the sky as 
with a garment. They see God face to face. They 
worship God, infinite and eternal. They feel His 



ON LOVING GOD 



273 



fatherly arms about them, and in their hearts they 
love Him. 

We must most of us confess, however, that we are 
not equal to this clear vision or to this high affection. 
We feel the need of a more near, and definite mani- 
festation of God than is given us in the stars or in 
the winds or in the strains of music. That this de- 
sire is wide-spread and ancient, so that it belongs 
to the common constitution of human nature, is seen 
in all religions. It is of the heart of all idolatry. 
The idol is always the visible symbol of the invisible. 
The hideousness and homeliness of some of the ob- 
jects of human worship seems very strange to us. 
But often the idol is purposely made unattractive 
lest it should be considered as more than a symbol, 
and be substituted for God whom it represents. 
Sometimes, of course, though less often than we 
think, the substitution is actually made. But the 
whole system is an endeavor to realize God. It is a 
confession of the inability of the majority of people 
to grasp a universal idea, and to love the Eternal. 

The apostle Philip spoke this human thought, and 
put this instinctive longing into words when he said : 
" Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." 
What answer did he look for ? Would the sky open, 
and the light of heaven gleam about the little com- 
pany, and God be seen, sceptre in hand, sitting on a 
great white throne, upon a floor of sapphire ? It is 
not likely that Philip expected exactly that, or that 
he definitely expected anything. There was in his 



274 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



mind a vague idea which he wished to have realized. 
His thought of God was dim and mystical and un- 
satisfactory, as ours is, and he wished to be taught 
better. He longed to have some clear conception of 
God that he might the more intelligently believe in 
Him, and the more fervently love Him. He stood 
before the mystery of God as we stand ; how could he 
know God ? how could he love God ? 

The answer of Jesus met the instinctive longing 
of humanity. It took men just as they were, — with 
all the blunders of idolatry, with all the human 
thoughts of God which had made Him somehow a 
man like themselves, — and recognized the truth which 
lay behind it all, and the universal need out of which 
it all had grown, and provided for it. Jesus gave 
the common people a definite idea of God. He made 
it possible for the humblest and the simplest of God's 
children to come near to Him with a definite affec- 
tion. " He that hath seen me," he said, " hath seen 
the Father." 

That is, Jesus Christ came into the world not only 
to set us an example how to live, and not only by the 
sacrifice of His death to save us from our sins, but 
to be Himself a revelation of God, so that we who 
see and know Him, see and know the Invisible and 
Eternal. He who loves Jesus loves God. There is 
a wide difference between bringing a revelation, and 
being a revelation. It is the difference between Jesus 
Christ and all other spiritual Masters. 

This is the secret, then, of loving God. It is not 



ON LOVING GOD 



275 



the whole secret. The men of the former time to 
whose word we go whom we would give religious 
truth its best expression, loved God devoutly; long 
before the birth of Jesus. And in the lands to-day 
where He is still unpreached, where man and woman 
are still in the Old Testament age of religion, and 
the light which shines in our hearts has not dawned, 
nevertheless God is known and loved. The world is 
a revelation of God. They who see the sun, and 
look up at night into the boundless spaces where the 
stars shine, and hear the voice of their own heart, 
recognize God. God has not anywhere left Himself 
without revelation. But Jesus Christ is the revela- 
tion of revelations. 

If it seems to anybody a hard thing to love God, 
this is what it is best to do. Take the story of the 
blessed life and simply read it slowly, chapter by 
chapter, day by day, trying to realize what it all 
means. Then multiply this tenderness and strength 
and truth and love by infinity, and we begin to get 
an idea of what God truly is. 

And then, love follows. For the consciousness 
of that in another which is worthy of love is a step 
towards love. And the consciousness of being loved 
is another step towards love. And " God so loved 
the world," — you remember the rest of that great 
sentence. You know what God did. 

Then, after the recognition of the loveableness of 
God, and of His love towards us, — then, as we think 



276 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



about it, as we allow it to take possession of our 
minds and hearts, — gradually growing, and no more 
to be explained than any other kind of growth, or 
any other kind of love, the love of God becomes a 
part, and the best part of our lives. By loving 
Jesus Christ, we come to love Almighty God. 

And then we learn the meaning of the love of 
God in its relation to eternal life. We find by our 
own experience why it was that Jesus answered a 
question about life eternal by a statement about love 
divine. We see that the relation between them is not 
arbitrary but natural, and that eternal life and 
divine love belong together. 

For eternal life is not a state of things which be- 
gins only after this present life is done. Jesus has 
Himself defined it in words which have an imme- 
diate and interpretive bearing upon his answer to 
the lawyer. " This," the Master says, " is life 
eternal, to know Thee, the only true God." And to 
know God and to love God are the same act dif- 
ferently described. Eternal life, therefore, is the 
continual consciousness of God. It is the highest way 
of living, the truest way of seeing things, the nearest 
approach to the Invisible and Eternal. 

Into this blessed life we enter by drawing near to 
Jesus Christ. More and more does the love of God 
grow in the hearts of all who give themselves to the 
influences of the life of Christ. With the heart and 
soul, with the strength— till it enters into every 



ON LOVING GOD 



277 



humblest deed we do, — with the mind, — till it colors 
every thought we think, — at last with our whole 
being we love Jesujs Christ, and God in Him. And 
we enter into life eternal. 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision 
but a new creature. Gal. 6 : 15. 

It means that the opportunity of everlasting sal- 
vation is as wide as the world. 

The ancient rite which is thus dismissed from the 
front rank of importance was the badge of exclusive- 
ness. It signified to the Old Testament people not 
only that they were admitted to the privileges of God, 
but that everybody else was kept out. The classic 
statement is in the words with which they confronted 
St. Paul, and the converts which he made in pagan 
cities, " Except ye be circumcised and keep the law 
of Moses, ye cannot be saved. " The Greeks, with all 
their profound contemplation of God, could not be 
saved. The Latins, with all their sense of justice and 
their endeavor after righteousness, could not be saved. 
The men of the East, with all their passionate de- 
votion to the unseen, could not be saved. Socrates 
was lost, Gautama Buddha was lost. Marcus Aure- 
lius might write a book about religion, filled with 
noble aspiration, but that made no difference: he 
was lost like the rest of them. So it was also with 
all the Christian saints and martyrs. I do not know 
how consistently the Jews of the present day hold to 
the old doctrine of salvation. They may still believe, 

278 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



279 



as their fathers did, that only Jews shall be saved. 
That, in any case is the theory. That is the ancient 
orthodoxy. Unless you conform to certain ordi- 
nances, and are thereby admitted to the company of 
the saved, — no matter who you are, how wise or how 
ignorant, and no matter what you do, God does not 
know your name. 

The Christians, under the leadership of St. Paul, 
faced this exclusive doctrine and repudiated it, but 
it came back. The position of the Hebrew Church 
was repeated in the Middle Ages by the Latin 
Church : except that baptism had taken the place of 
circumcision. Baptism and the Holy Communion 
had become the badges of an exclusive salvation 
The church was like the ark, floating serene over the 
vast flood beneath which all the rest of the world was 
drowned. If, by baptism, you had got into the 
church, and if, by the Holy Communion, you re- 
mained there, everlasting joy awaited you. The 
church was like the bridegroom's house in the parable, 
the baptized were within, and the door was shut. 
Outside was weeping and gnashing of teeth. Even 
the smallest children, if by neglect of their parents, 
or even by no fault at all, they were unbaptized and 
died in that condition, missed the felicity of heaven. 
There was some debate as to their exact condition, 
but general agreement that they could not be ad- 
mitted into the full privilege of the future world. 
As for the heathen, their case was plain enough. And 
the Jews fell under the same condemnation. They 



280 



THE YEAR OP GRACE 



were all lost, lost, lost. Outside the visible church, 
such was the phrase, was no salvation. The great 
world of living and striving men and women, sons and 
daughters of God, beheld again, as in the days of St. 
Paul, a company of persons, relatively few in num- 
ber, who said, " We are certain of salvation ever- 
lasting: you are all under the condemnation of God." 
And when they were pressed for a reason for their 
assurance, their reply was, " We have been baptized, 
and you have not." 

When the Reformation came, and many old errors 
were discredited and disowned, and men were taught 
that baptism and the holy communion, sacred and 
helpful as they are, do not of themselves insure sal- 
vation, and the Christian world seemed ready for 
a proclamation of the universal love of God and the 
universal opportunity of man, this ancient and in- 
veterate delusion, under another form, continued. 
Now they got it out of the teachings of St. Paul him- 
self, and made the apostle of liberty bring again the 
hopes of men into bondage. The doctrine of the 
narrowness of salvation was based upon election; 
that is, upon an eternal choice which, they said, God 
made before the beginning of the world. A few, for 
his own purposes, and of his own pleasure, he selected 
to be saved, the rest he made as he makes the mil- 
lions of blossoms which shine for a little while on the 
branches of the fruit trees in the spring, only to be 
blown by the wind upon the ground. Johannes Agri- 
cola in Meditation speaks for the new theory. He 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



281 



gives voice to the old idea of God in the language of 
a new time. I, he says, am chosen while most of my 
neighbors are rejected. 

For as I lie, smiled-on, full-fed 

By unexhausted power to bless, 
I gaze below on hell's fierce bed 

And those its waves of flame oppress 
Warning in ghastly wretchedness ; 

Whose life on earth aspired to be 
- One altar-smoke, so pure! — to win 
If not love like God's love for me, 

At least to keep His anger in ; 

And all their striving turned to sin. 
Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white 

With prayer, the broken-hearted nun, 
The martyr, the wan acolyte, 

The incense -swinging child, — undone 

Before God fashioned star or sun ! 

This is the grim expression of a theology which 
thrust its tough roots deep into our New England 
soil. Our ancestors, like the Latins and the He- 
brews before them, held to the doctrine of the few- 
ness of the saved. This they believed in spite of the 
general goodness of the common life. The common 
life, as both the Hebrews and the Latins saw it, was 
obviously bad. The world, in their day, was a bad 
world, filled with lust and violence, and lying in 
darkness. The contemporary life seemed to bear out 
the hard theory. It was easy to doubt that heaven 
would be populated by the fierce and evil men who 
jostled the Hebrews and the Christians in the streets. 



282 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



But the New England Calvinists lived amidst more 
congenial surroundings. Their theory that most of 
the congregation lay under the wrath of God was 
based rather on logic than on observation: on logic, 
and on texts of scripture. Was it not our Lord Him- 
self who said, " Many are called, but few chosen ? " 
Was it not He who answered the question, " Are 
there few that be saved ? " by urging men to enter in 
at the strait gate, and added, " Strait is the gate 
and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and 
few there be that find it ? " 

St. Paul's great words, " neither circumcision avail- 
eth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new crea- 
ture," do not touch this deep and insoluble matter 
of the number of the saved. What they do is to re- 
fuse utterly the test by which men in his time were 
determining the number. That was a narrow pro- 
vincial, local test. In the nature of things, it was not 
applicable to the race. It exalted the tradition of a 
tribe into a necessity of salvation for all the nations 
of the earth. The Latin test was better, because 
it was unhampered by any limitations of race, and 
because it was the symbol of a spiritual life, but it 
was still a symbol, an exterior thing, an outward 
and visible sign. Both the Hebrews and the Latins 
magnified the privileges of a religious society until 
they affirmed that only those who belonged to their 
society could go to heaven. They had texts for it, 
as I said. But the texts were in contradiction. The 
Christians who met to hear St. Paul recount his mis- 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



283 



sionary achievements, in the conference at Jerusalem, 
dealt frankly with the texts. They all admitted that 
circumcision was plainly commanded in the Bible; 
not one of them doubted that it had been so com- 
manded by God Himself. But they perceived that 
God Himself had manifestly blest man uncircum- 
cised, and they read therein a revelation of God's 
will. The word in the Book, they said to themselves, 
was of temporary and local application, and they de- 
termined to follow the word which was spoken in 
their own souls and in the life about them. Shall 
we, or shall we not, obey the Bible ? That was the 
tremendous question which they had under debate. 
All in favor of obeying the Bible will say Aye; 
those opposed will say No. And they all said No! 
The doctrine that everlasting salvation is dependent 
on any rite or ceremony or ordinance, however an- 
cient and however sacred, they declined. God, they 
said, had taught them other and better. Salvation 
outside the visible church? Yes, thank God, abun- 
dant salvation far beyond those narrow limits, 
whether Jewish or Christian. Neither circumcision 
availeth anything nor uncircumcision ; neither bap- 
tism availeth anything nor the lack of baptism; 
neither Catholicism availeth anything, nor Protes- 
tantism; neither Christianity availeth anything, nor 
Paganism. All the old tests fail, all the conventional 
boundaries are leveled with the ground. Nothing is 
left standing across the road between man and 
heaven except this universal, and essential and in- 



284 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



evitable condition, " a new creature." That is what 
avails. Wherever men have their residence upon this 
planet, and in whatever age they live, and whatever 
be their religion or their revolt against all religion, 
this is the eternal difference which divides them one 
from another, " a new creature." He is saved who 
walks in newness of life. 

This signifies a difference in religion between the 
means and the end. The end and aim of religion is to 
make of the natural man a new creature. The natural 
man, living according to his senses, a higher animal, 
swayed by his emotions and his passions, frankly 
selfish as a beast of the field, and intent only on the 
gratification of the moment, bounded in his desires 
by the visible and the tangible, is changed by religion 
into a new creature. He is taught to control him- 
self by conscience according to a standard of right 
thought and action, so that he does things which are 
hard for him to do, and refrains from doing things 
which by mere animal nature are almost instinctive ; 
and he considers the effect of his behavior on his 
neighbors, and tries for their sake to increase the 
general happiness of life, having ideals of social 
duty and trying to realize them. Moreover, becom- 
ing thus aware in a new way of himself and of his 
neighbors, he becomes aware of God also, perceives 
God though he cannot see Him, and brings his brief 
life as best he can into relation with life eternal. It 
is a long and halting process, and even the saints 
do not succeed in it to perfection. But it is the 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



285 



noblest aspiration in the world. It is the impetus 
and the measure of progress. 

For the attaining of these high ends, various means 
are found to be helpful. Every religion exists and 
continues to exist because there is something in it 
which accomplishes this purpose. Religions die when 
they cease to change the natural man into a new 
creature. They grow strong in the world in pro- 
portion to their spiritual results. Christianity is the 
supreme religion because it is more effective than any 
other in turning men from the natural to the super- 
natural life : that is, from those lower customs which 
are of the earth, earthy, to those higher customs 
which are from heaven. It will one day govern the 
whole human race, merging all other religions into 
itself, because it will be recognized by all men as 
having this divine quality, as being able to trans- 
form the worse into the better. But in Christianity, 
as in all religions, the means are of value only as 
they actually contribute to the result. Some children 
in school have an idea that there is some sort of 
merit in the act of study, and that if they sit for an 
hour looking at a book they may get up at the end 
of that time with a clear conscience and a rainbow 
in the soul, as if they had accomplished something. 
They may have accomplished something, or not. It 
depends on what they have learned. It is a matter 
not of sitting, nor of looking, but of learning. Have 
they got the lesson ? If not, the fact that they have 
spent an hour facing the book, does but convict them 



286 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



of dulness or of an idle mind. Neither the act of 
studying availeth anything, nor the lack of it, but a 
learned lesson. Some people have an idea that church 
membership or even church attendance is of itself 
meritorious. To have been baptized, and confirmed, 
and to come regularly to the holy communion are 
somewhere above recorded, they imagine, to their 
credit. But these are all of them aids to a holy life, 
and are recorded for us or against us according to 
the effect which they produce. The things them- 
selves, apart from their effects, are of no value. No- 
body will be everlastingly saved because he went to 
church, or everlastingly lost because he stayed away. 
The important consideration is the total result of 
going or of going not, upon the man. Here he is in 
the midst of spiritual opportunities among which 
he makes his choice. He is a Roman Catholic, or a 
Unitarian, or a Baptist, or a Buddhist, or nothing at 
all : very well, what is the fruit of it ? What is the 
outcome of it in terms of character? Is the man a 
new creature ? Has he approached, by use of one or 
others of these aids, to the measure of the stature of 
a good man ? 

Everybody sees that our Lord, in his description 
of the Last Judgment, makes no reference to sac- 
raments, to creeds, to churches, or even to religions. 
The determining fact is the man as his sacrament, 
his creed and his religion have made him. This is 
because, when that last day arrives, the aids to good- 
ness will be of interest no longer. Were you a com- 



BUT A NEW CREATURE 



287 



municant ? Were you a member of the true church ? 
Were you an orthodox believer? No matter now. 
What did your religion, whatever it was, inspire you 
to do ? How did you live ? And now that your life 
is ended, what manner of person are you in heart 
and soul ? Circumcision availeth nothing, nor un- 
circumcision, nor orthodoxy, nor heresy, but a new 
creature. 

You will not think that I am depreciating the 
aids to a good life, nor making out that it signifies 
little whether one goes to church or not, or believes 
the truth or not. That, of course, is a natural ob- 
jection to the whole argument, and St. Paul's hearers 
were prompt to make it. If neither circumcision 
availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, what advan- 
tage, then, hath the Jew? or what profit is there of 
circumcision ? As if one were to ask, what advantage, 
then, hath the Churchman ? or what profit is there of 
the holy communion ? St. Paul answered, " Much 
everyway, " but he did not go into the details. Much 
everyway, but the fact remains that the essential to 
salvation is not that one be either a Jew or a church- 
man, but that he be a new creature. What God cares 
for is simple goodness. The line of the hymn which 
says, " He died to make us good," states the heart of 
the truth. Wherever in any church or in any nation, 
a man fears God and works righteousness, he is ac- 
cepted with him. Wherever, in any religion, or in 
any highest and holiest place in it, a man praises 
God with his lips while in his heart and in his life 



288 



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he is far away from him, shall his profession save 
him ? shall his conformity to the rites of religion save 
him? Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor 
uncircumcision, but a new creature. 

The purpose of our prayers, the end and goal and 
intention of all our spiritual privileges here, is the 
attainment of some measure of newness of life. We 
would be each of us by the grace of God, a new crea- 
ture. We would put off what St. Paul calls " the 
old man " ; we would be rid of old negligences, and 
weaknesses, and whatever else is unworthy of a 
Christian. Let us call the services and the sacra- 
ments to our asistance. Let us say to them as Jacob 
said to the angel, " I will not let thee go except thou 
bless me." The words of the text are directed, as we 
have seen, against a misuse of services and sacra- 
ments, as if the mere fact of attendance or of partici- 
pation in them was of itself pleasing to God. No, 
St. Paul says, the way to please God is to be a new 
creature. But services and sacraments used aright 
will help us towards that transformation. That is 
what we want, a new heart and a new will and a new 
life, and here we come for strength. Here we come 
desiring in these prayers and praises to hear the 
voice of God and to see Jesus, and thus to have our 
affection and our faith and our obedience renewed. 
God grant it. God grant that all that we say and do 
in this place may be to the praise and glory of His 
holy name, and to the increase of true religion. 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 



But what are they among so many ? St. John 6 : 9. 

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle 
which is described by all the four evangelists. It 
seems to have made a profound impression upon 
those who saw it and upon those who heard about it. 
It was an act of uncommon eminence, in an unusual 
degree illuminative, a symbol and a revelation. Af- 
ter other miracles we read that the people wondered, 
but after this miracle the multitude sought to make 
Jesus their king. It was not only marvellous but 
regal. 

The minds of the multitude went back at once to 
Moses, and the manna in the desert. Some of them 
may have remembered also an incident, much less 
familiar to most readers of the Bible, in the life of 
Elisha. " There came a man," the record says, 
" from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God 
bread of the first-fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and 
full ears in the husk thereof. And he said, Give 
unto the people that they may eat. And his servitor 
said, What, should I set this before an hundred men ? 
He said again, Give the people that they may eat: 
for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat and leave 
thereof. So he set it before them and they did eat, 
and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord." 

289 



290 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



The act of Elisha was an exercise of bountiful and 
gracious hospitality. That an hundred hungry men 
were fed was an important part of it; and that the 
greater portion of the food came mysteriously upon 
the table at the clapping of the prophet's hands, was 
also a matter of interest; but the best part of it all 
was the fact that the man of God invited his neigh- 
bors to dine with him. Like the king in the parable, 
he made a great supper, and bade many. What he 
gave them to eat, and whence he got it, were but 
domestic details, none of their business : the supreme 
thing was that he himself sat at the head of the table. 
It was the right place for a prophet, even for a prince. 
When the people saw Jesus sitting there they could 
not restrain their enthusiasm; their hearts glowed 
within them; they rose up with shouting, declaring 
that He was their king. They would have pro- 
claimed and crowned Him on the spot. It was with 
much difficulty that He restrained them. 

Was it not indeed a true instinct? He who by a 
splendid deed,- — be it a miracle or not, — shows that 
he is at one with God, and at the same time, by the 
same deed, makes it plain that he is in sympathy with 
the needs and joys of his fellow men, is he not in 
truth a king? 

It is to this social significance of the feeding of the 
five thousand that I ask your attention. 

It is true that it is described as a miracle. There 
is an interesting theory to the effect that the actual 
event was simply this : the apostles, under our Lord's 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 291 

direction, set the crowd the example of sharing what 
they had with those who had nothing, and this ex- 
ample being generally followed, there was enough 
to go around, and more too. It is pretty plain, how- 
ever, that no such explanation was in the mind of 
Matthew, of Mark, of Luke, or of John. The as- 
tonishment which they all express and record is out 
of all proportion to so simple a piece of domestic 
economy. It is described as a miracle. Moreover, 
it is one of those miracles which because they have 
to do with material nature are very difficult, if not 
impossible, to understand. The miracles which deal 
with human nature, such as the acts of healing the 
sick, no longer perplex us. We can hardly say that 
we understand them, but we perceive that they have 
a normal place in human life. They happen every 
day. But this multiplication of the loaves, which to 
the mind of the past was an aid to faith, to the mind 
of the present is a hindrance. We no longer say 
with Tertullian, " It is certain, because it is impos- 
sible." 

With this difficulty, however, I do not intend to 
deal, being incompetent. I do not know of any way 
whereby this narrative may be satisfactorily ad- 
justed to the world of nature with which we are 
acquainted. I purpose for the present to put all 
that aside. For a miracle is most profitably inter- 
preted like a picture. Here are critics examining a 
painting. One is a botanist, who devotes his atten- 
tion to the success or failure of the artist in following 



292 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



the fine pattern of nature. Another is an historian, 
who considers the attire of the pictured persons in 
its relation to the garments worn at the date when 
they are supposed to have lived. These are valid 
criticisms, though neither Raphael nor Michael 
Angelo can endure them. But another critic is a 
simple-minded person who cares only for the story 
which the picture tells. And he gets at the heart 
of it. So it is with this dramatic scene from the 
Gospels. It may be studied by the man of gram- 
mar and by the man of science : we need them both. 
What I purpose to do at this moment is to take it 
just as it stands, asking no technical questions, try- 
ing to discover what it means. 

It is a social miracle. That is the chief fact 
about it. It is filled with social significance. The 
lessons which it teaches are most of them social les- 
sons. 

See how modern, even contemporary, is the situa- 
tion. Here are twelve men with food and five thou- 
sand hungry. The contrasted groups represent so- 
ciety. They stand for the living world of which we 
are a part. They are the House of Have and the 
House of Want : on one side, the privileged ; on the 
other side, the unprivileged. 

The situation compelled then the same question 
which it compels now : What shall the twelve do ? 

One thing which the twelve may do is this: they 
may take the five loaves and the two fishes, and 
divide them into small lots, and sell them. They are 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 293 



in an enviable economic position. They have the in- 
estimable advantage of the monopolist. They are 
for the moment in control of one of the necessaries 
of life. It is true that the. stock is small, but the 
need is great. The customers are many, and the 
price may be set at almost any figure. Remember 
that the twelve are Jews, every man of them; be- 
longing to a race which has been eminent for its 
skill in trade since the days when Jacob bargained 
with God. Apostles though they are, they have a 
keen perception of the commercial possibilities of a 
situation. They are the men who said to the Mas- 
ter, " We have left all and followed Thee, what shall 
we have therefore ? " 

Of course, the idea is absurd. I do not believe, 
any more than you, that the thought entered into 
the mind even of Judas that the occasion might be 
used for gain. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it 
has come into the minds of many men more honest 
than Judas. It has been held by reputable citizens 
and communicants of churches that the sole purpose 
of business is to enrich the men who are conducting 
it. That is why monopoly is regarded by thoughtful 
persons with suspicion and hostility. It is a matter 
of common notoriety, verified by a thousand in- 
stances, that the monopolist cares nothing for our 
good. It has happened again and again that plans 
which were plainly for the best interests of the com- 
munity have been defeated by railroads, — to take a 
single example, — because they might injure railroad 



294 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



business. You know what I mean, and you know 
that good men are thus setting their private gain 
against the public benefit. The proposition that a 
man should carry on his affairs with reference to the 
general welfare seems to these excellent gentlemen 
not only impracticable but foolish. It is the ideal 
of the physician. Imagine a medical society hinder- 
ing the closing of open sewers because that would 
hurt their business ! It is the ideal of the lawyer ; 
it is the ideal of the minister. But it seems to be 
remote from the minds of a good many men of bus- 
iness. It is what the teacher lives for ; it is the pur- 
pose of every right-minded scholar ; it makes the dif- 
ference between the politician and the patriot. It 
ought to mark the difference between the Christian 
and the pagan on every corporation board. 

But the twelve and the five thousand are still 
confronting one another. The twelve will not sell the 
loaves and fishes : that is plain. What will they do ? 
They may sit down and eat them. 

This they may do in the spirit of selfishness. They 
may congratulate themselves that they at least have 
something for supper. They had a reasonable fore- 
sight and have prudently made ready for this moment 
of need. The five thousand, had they been equally 
wise and provident, might also have had provision 
in their baskets. They ate their supper in the middle 
of the day. A bit of hunger will do them no harm, 
and will teach them to be more careful another time. 
Why should we deny ourselves for the sake of these 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 295 

imprudent persons ? Are not the loaves and fishes 
a proper and deserved reward for our own virtue. 
Let us sit down, then, and make the best of what we 
have, and the neighbors may look out for themselves. 

I do not account even this theory a very likely one ; 
but it is at least consistent with some things which 
we know about the apostles. They were human 
beings, like the best of us, and were tempted to be 
selfish as we are. It will be remembered that two 
of them, — two of the best of them, — tried to get in 
before the others and secure the best seats in the splen- 
did kingdom of heaven which they expected would 
be set up in Jerusalem. So long as they had their 
desire, the others might take whatever should be left. 
We are all open to this accusation. So long as we 
have food and shelter and the comforts of life we are 
very apt to be content, no matter what may be the 
lot of our less happy neighbors out of sight. We are 
even disposed to congratulate ourselves upon the con- 
trast, as an evidence of our superior merit. We are 
inclined to accept the situation as the logical and 
laudable result of a survival of the fittest. The 
apostles may easily have done the same. Anyhow, 
they were hungry, and they had bread : eat it, then, 
and say no more about it. 

It is more likely that if the idea of eating the 
loaves and fishes came at all into the minds of the 
apostles, it was the suggestion not of complacency, 
but of perplexity. What else can they do? The 
crowd is so great and their own means of providing 



296 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



for it are so meagre, that they are at a loss where to 
begin. 

This is the version of the story which includes most 
of us. Our hearts ache for these our poor brethren. 
We would be glad enough to help them, if we knew 
how to do it. They are mistaken who infer that we 
do not care. It is not sympathy which we lack, but 
knowledge. We are restrained by the serious diffi- 
culties of the situation. The philanthropists suggest 
this, and the societies suggest that, and the associated 
charities suggest the other; and we know not what 
advice to heed. We used to think that we might 
freely follow our conscience or the instincts of our 
heart and give to them that ask, but we are solemnly 
assured that this is but to make a bad matter worse, 
and do more harm than good. The result is that we 
give nothing; or if we do give it is with shame and 
self-reproach. Under such circumstances what can 
the twelve do better with the loaves and fishes than to 
eat them? If they put them into the outstretched 
hands of the five thousand, may they not make five 
thousand paupers? 

If the twelve were thus tempted either to sell the 
loaves or to eat them, they were enabled to resist the 
temptation by the aid of two advantages which they 
had over us. 

One advantage was that they looked right into the 
faces of their hungry brethren. We do not com- 
monly do that. The privileged are for the most part 
but vaguely aware of the existence of the unprivi- 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 297 

leged. They know that there are tenement houses in 
the town, and that they who lodge in them lack some 
of the comforts and conveniences of normal life ; they 
know also that there are gangs of slaves with burdens 
of ivory on their heads trudging along the painful 
and tragic roads of Africa. And one fact seems al- 
most as far away as the other. The twelve live in 
pleasant houses, amidst grass and trees, on wide and 
clean streets. The five thousand live out of sight 
in back alleys, in the slums. The distance between 
the suburbs and the slums is astronomical: the city 
map gives no indication of it. 

The other advantage of the twelve was that they 
looked also into the face of Jesus Christ. There He 
stood beside them. The consciousness of His pres- 
ence helped them. It was possible even in His pres- 
ence to be narrow and prejudiced and mean and 
selfish ; but it was not so easy as it is for us, for whom 
the consciousness of Him as our companion is natu- 
rally less distinct. He is indeed our companion. As 
we meet the alternatives of our lives, He meets them 
with us. He will tell us what to do, if we consult 
Him. But that is hard for us to realize. 

Under these circumstances, with the poor visibly 
before them and the Master visibly beside them, the 
twelve did neither sell the bread nor eat it. They 
gave it to their hungry brethren. 

The first thing which they did was to establish 
some sort of order. By the direction of Jesus, they 
made the men sit down in companies, by hundreds 



298 



THE YEAR OF GRACE 



and by fifties, on the green grass. For the feeding 
of the multitude took place just before the Passover, 
— as we say, before Easter, — in the spring. There 
they sat, then, on the grass. It represents the social 
element in philanthropy. It means large, general 
plans, and organization to carry them into effect. 
It means a preliminary understanding of the whole 
situation, so that relief when it is given may have 
reference to the common need, and may be consistent 
with it. The charitable societies, and the studies and 
purposes of students of social subjects, are endeavors 
to make the men sit down. 

The next thing which the apostles did was to es- 
tablish a personal relationship. The Master dis- 
tributed to the twelve, and the twelve to the five 
thousand, one by one. Out they went, each with his 
fragment of bread and of fish, to help the nearest 
man, and then the next. It represents the individual 
element in philanthropy. It means attention and 
interest and friendship. It means that the giver 
knows to whom he gives, and cares* 

There they were together, the two essential ele- 
ments of effective beneficience, social and individual, 
order and interest, sense and sentiment, mind and 
heart, the Associated Charities and the friendly 
neighbor. 

And as the twelve went, in this wise and kindly 
spirit, behold a miracle. Their hearts failed them, as 
our hearts fail us : the need so great and the supply 
so small. It seemed even a foolish venture, an im- 



THE TWELVE AND THE FIVE THOUSAND 299 

pertinent trifling with a serious matter. Five barley 
loaves and two small fishes, what are they among so 
many? But the men obeyed and went. It was at 
least plain that each of them could share his food 
with one or two, and that they did, and then they 
found that the supply instead of diminishing in- 
creased as they went on. We have verified it in our 
own experience. The miracle of the multiplication 
of the loaves is repeated day by day in the life of 
everybody who is trying to be helpful to his neighbor. 
It is the constant blessing of all social service. He 
who begins to help finds grace and means to con- 
tinue, and after each helpful act is better fitted to 
help again. 

Again, to-day, the Lord Christ is at the feast. 
And we come, as they came in the old time. We 
come in need, hungering and thirsty after righteous- 
ness, earnestly desiring to be better than we are. And 
he comes also as of old, looking upon us with com- 
passion, and at the holy table he feeds us with the 
bread of life. O Lord Christ, feed us indeed, grant 
us thy grace, give us thy blessing as we enter into 
this new week, minister unto us each one according 
to our need, and help us in our turn to minister to 
others. 



WAY 



8* 

r?3 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 522 151 7 f 



